THE    UNITED    STATES 

AN   OUTLINE   OF   POLITICAL   HISTORY 


UNITED  STATES 

OF  AMERICA 


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§7RUTHERS  *  CO.  N.  Y. 


THE  UNITED  STATES 


AN   OUTLINE   OF   POLITICAL  HISTORY 

1492-1871 


BY 

GOLDWIN  SMITH,   D.C.L. 


"  This  will  sometime  hence  be  a  vast  Empire,  the  seat  of  power  and 
learning.  Naiitre  has  refused  it  nothing,  and  there  will  grow  a  people  out 
of  our  little  spot,  England,  that  will  fill  this  vast  space  and  divide  tin's  por 
tion  of  the  globe  with  the  Spaniards,  who  are  possessed  of  the  other  half"  — 
GENERAL  WOLFE 

"  I  am  not  wanting  in  affection  and  love  for  America.  I  am  rather 
wanting  in  distrust  and  ingratitude  towards  Europe."  —  DR.  ROQUE  SAENZ 
PENA,  Speech  at  the  Pan-American  Conference  at  Washington,  1890 


gorfc 
MACMILLAN    AND    CO. 

AND    LONDON 
1893 

All  rights  reserved 


COPYRIGHT,  1893, 
BT  MACMILLAN  AND  CO. 


Set  up  and  electrotyped  August,  1893.     Reprinted  September,  November, 
December,  1893. 


M^RSFJ  STEfHENS 


Xorfcoooti  ^prrss : 

J.  S.  Gushing-  &  Co.  —  Berwick  &  Smith. 
Boston,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


PREFACE. 

To  an  Englishman,  particularly  if  he  is  visiting  America, 
an  outline  of  the  political  history  of  the  United  States 
may  not  be  unwelcome.  An  American,  being  familiar 
with  the  main  facts  and  the  general  relations  of  parties, 
would  look  for  details.  It  is,  therefore,  for  English  rather 
than  American  readers  that  this  sketch  is  intended.  If  it 
comes  into  the  hands  of  an  American,  his  liberality  will 
make  allowance  for  the  position  of  an  Englishman  who 
regards  the  American  Commonwealth  as  the  great  achieve 
ment  of  his  race,  and  looks  forward  to  the  voluntary 
reunion  of  the  American  branches  of  the  race  within  its 
pale,  yet  desires  to  do  justice  to  the  mother  country,  and 
to  render  to  her  the  meed  of  gratitude  which  will  always 
be  her  due. 

Should  this  volume  find  acceptance  it  may  be  followed 
by  a  companion  volume  on  the  same  scale,  and  treating, 
necessarily  with  the  same  succinctness,  the  recent  history 
of  parties,  and  the  questions  of  the  present  day. 

A  complete  list  of  all  the  authorities  consulted  would 
be  out  of  proportion  to  the  book  itself,  but  special  obliga 
tions  should  be  acknowledged  to  Gordon's  "  History  of 
the  American  Revolution,"  Bancroft's  "History  of  the 
United  States,"  Hildreth's  "History  of  the  United  States," 


310086 


vi  PREFACE. 

Palfrey's  "History  of  New  England,"  Henry  Adams's 
"History  of  the  United  States,"  Schouler's  "History  of 
the  United  States,"  McMaster's  "History  of  the  People 
of  the  United  States,"  Bryant's  "Popular  History  oi 
the  United  States,"  Justin  Winsor's  "Narrative  and 
Critical  History  of  America,"  Charles  K.  Adams's  "Co 
lumbus,"  Draper's  "The  Civil  War  in  America,"  the 
"Epochs  of  American  History"  series,  the  "History  oi 
the  Civil  War  in  America "  by  the  Comte  de  Paris,  the 
"  Cyclopaedia  of  Political  Science,  Political  Economy,  and 
United  States  History,"  the  "  American  Statesmen  "  series. 
the  works  of  Professor  Fiske,  Swinton's  "Decisive  Battles 
of  the  War,"  Sabine's  "  Loyalists  of  the  American  Revolu 
tion,"  Blaine's  "  Twenty  Years  of  Congress,"  Thomas 
Jones's  "  History  of  New  York  during  the  Revolutionary 
War,"  published  by  the  New  York  Historical  Society, 
and  the  "  American  Commonwealths "  series,  also  Ban 
croft's  "  History  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States." 
The  writer  would  be  glad  to  think  that  his  work  had  been 
instrumental  in  exciting  the  curiosity  of  English  readers 
and  leading  them  to  resort  to  the  sources  of  ample  infor 
mation  mentioned  in  this  list. 


The  writer  cannot  send  this  fourth  edition  of  his  work  to  press, 
without  specially  acknowledging  the  kindness  of  his  American  readers 
and  reviewers,  whose  reception  of  a  book  which  in  some  things  con 
travenes  cherished  traditions  is  a  proof  of  American  candour  and 
liberality.  Perhaps  they  have  discerned,  beneath  the  British  critic  of 
American  History,  the  Anglo-Saxon  who,  to  the  Republic  which  he 
regards  as  the  grand  achievement  of  his  race,  desires  to  offer  no  hom 
age  less  pure  or  noble  than  the  truth. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER   I. 

THE   COLONIES. 

Discovery  of  a  western  continent  by  Columbus  —  Early  adventurers  — 
The  landing  of  the  Mayflower  —  The  Plymouth  pilgrims  —  Their 
allegiance  to  the  old  land  —  The  founding  of  Massachusetts  —  The 
Puritan  commonwealth  —  Early  religious  strifes  —  Political  aspect  of 
Puritanism  —  Puritan  democracy  —  A  federation  formed  —  Puritan 
legislation  —  Social  life  —  Slavery  —  Relations  with  the  Indians  — 
The  new  colonies  and  the  Crown  —  Massachusetts  reduced  to  a  de 
pendency —  William  III  and  Massachusetts  —  Decay  of  Puritanism  — 
"Witchcraft  —  Increase  of  wealth  —  Virginia  —  Virginian  life  and 
society  —  Slavery  and  slave  laws  —  Politics,  the  church,  and  educa 
tion —  The  founding  of  Maryland  —  Religious  strifes  and  political 
changes  —  Georgia  —  The  founding  of  Pennsylvania  —  New  York 
and  New  Jersey  —  Characteristics  of  the  Middle  States  —  Restric 
tions  on  colonial  trade  —  Political  embroilments  —  Benjamin  Frank 
lin  Pages  1-63 


CHAPTER   II. 
REVOLUTION,  INDEPENDENCE,  AND  UNION. 

French  hostilities  in  the  new  world  —  The  quarrel  with  England  —  The 
colonial  relationship  —  Cause  of  the  revolt  —  Separation  and  the  sep 
arators —  Samuel  Adams  —  Patrick  Henry  —  Irritation  of  Massachu 
setts  —  Fomenting  influences  —  Trade  restrictions  —  The  Stamp  Act 
and  the  tea  duty  —  Ebullition  at  Boston — Repression  —  The  King's 
difficulties  —  Federation  for  defence  —  The  Declaration  of  Independ 
ence  —  Opening  of  the  war  —  Lexington  —  Bunker's  Hill  —  Evacua 
tion  of  Boston  —  The  loyalists  —  Canada  attacked  —  New  York 


CONTENTS. 

taken  —  Washington  at  Valley  Forge  —  Character  of  Washington  — 
Burgoyne's  expedition —  State  of  the  country  —  Character  of  the  troops 
—  Financial  disturbance  —  French  aid  —  Arnold  and  Andre"  —  British 
successes  in  the  South  —  Capitulation  of  Cornwallis  at  Yorktown  — 
Treatment  of  the  loyalists  —  England  and  the  separation  —  The  col 
onies  after  the  revolt  —  Constitutional  and  other  changes  —  Impotency 
of  Congress  —  Discontent  rife  —  The  federal  convention  —  The  con 
stitution  —  Provisions  of  the  constitution  .  .  .  Fages  64-lLKJ 


CHAPTER   III. 
REPUBLIC. 

Washington  president  —  Presidential  etiquette  and  state  —  Success  of 
the  constitution  —  Birth  of  parties  —  Alexander  Hamilton  —  His  abil 
ity,  character,  and  principles  —  His  Secretaryship  of  the  Treasury  — 
Thomas  Jefferson  —  His  character,  theories,  and  political  principles 
—  Growth  of  the  Republic  —  England  and  the  new  republic  —  George 
Ill's  reception  of  John  Adams  —  Washington's  second  term  —  The 
French  Revolution  and  American  parties  —  The  question  of  belliger 
ent  rights  —  Jay's  treaty  —  Retirement  of  Washington  —  The  city  of 
Washington  —  John  Adams  President  —  His  appearance  and  charac 
ter —  Resentment  against  France — The  feeling  quelled  —  Bitterness 
of  party  spirit  —  Jefferson  President  —  His  inaugural  address  —  Ac 
quisition  of  Louisiana  —  Jefferson's  first  term  —  His  second  term  — 
International  complications :  neutral  trade,  belligerent  rights,  impress 
ment  of  seamen  —  Action  of  the  Leopard  and  Chesapeake — Jefferson 
places  an  embargo  on  trade — Madison  President  —  Diplomatic  em 
broilments  —  Influence  of  Kentucky  —  Henry  Clay  —  Motives  leading 
to  war  — The  war  of  1812  — The  treaty  of  Ghent  — Battle  of  New 
Orleans  —  Results  of  the  war  —  Boundaries  in  Maine  and  Oregon  — 
Monroe  President  —  The  Monroe  doctrine  .  .  Pages  130-170 


CHAPTER   IV. 
DEMOCRACY  AND  SLAVERY. 

Monroe's  Presidency  —  The  era  of  good  feeling  —  Geographical  division 
between  freedom  and  slavery  —  The  Presidential  fever  and  its  effects 
• — Reign  of  the  "  Machine"  —  Henry  Clay  —  His  character  and  prin 
ciples —  Daniel  Webster — His  character  —  His  oratory  —  John  C. 
Calhoun  —  His  character  and  principles — Slavery  and  the  Senate 


CONTENTS.  ix 

debates  —  Benton  —  Randolph  —  The  tariff  question  —  Free  trade  vs. 
protection  —  Webster ;  Clay  ;  McDuffie  —  Public  land  and  improve 
ments  —  John  Quincy  Adams  —  His  character  and  principles  —  Mili 
tary  renown  as  a  political  influence  —  Andrew  Jackson's  Presiden 
tial  campaign  —  Jackson's  inauguration  —  The  spoils  go  to  the  victor 
—  A  court  quarrel  —  Jackson's  despotism  —  The  National  Bank 
question  —  South  Carolina  rises  against  the  tariff  —  The  Force 
Bill  — Effects  of  Jackson's  policy  —  Demagogism  —  Van  Buren  — 
Party  lines  —  The  anti- Masons  —  William  Harrison's  Presidential 
campaign  —  Tyler  President  —  Texas  and  Mexico  —  Clay's  candida 
ture  —  Polk  President  —  War  with  Mexico  —  Texas  annexed  —  Tay 
lor  President — Fillmore  President  —  Close  of  Webster's  career  — 
Texas  and  slavery  —  End  of  the  Whig  party  —  Pierce  President  — 
The  Knownothings  —  The  Irish  vote  —  Growth  of  the  Republic  — 
Progress  westward  —  Development  and  expansion  —  Political  and 
social  democracy Pages  177-220 


CHAPTER   V. 
RUPTURE  AND  RECONSTRUCTION. 

Slavery  forced  to  the  front  —  The  question  a  thing  of  the  past  —  Its  source 
—  Ancient  compared  with  American  slavery  —  Fusion  of  races  impos 
sible  —  Emancipation  discouraged  —  Slavery  not  elevating  —  Condi 
tion  of  the  negro  —  Sinister  aspects  and  influences  of  slavery  —  Slave 
industry  —  Aggressive  character  of  slavery  —  Apologies  for  the  sys 
tem —  Possibilities  of  a  peaceful  solution  —  Dominance  of  slavery  — 
Its  adherents  —  Protests,  political,  philosophical,  literary  —  William 
Lloyd  Garrison  —  Wendell  Phillips  —  Strong  feeling  in  the  South  — 
Case  of  Anthony  Burns  —  Stephen  Douglas  in  politics  —  Squatter 
sovereignty  —  The  Kansas- Nebraska  Act — Case  of  Dred  Scott  — 
Free  Soilers  —  Disorder  in  Kansas  —  Violent  debates  in  Congress  — 
The  two  parties,  Republican  and  Democratic  —  John  Brown  —  Abra 
ham  Lincoln  —  His  early  life  —  His  appearance,  capability,  and  char 
acter  —  His  political  principles  —  His  powers  of  debate  —  Elected 
President  —  South  Carolina  secedes  —  Other  States  follow  —  A 
Southern  Confederacy  formed  —  Slavery  the  cause  of  secession  — 
The  Confederate  government  —  Buchanan's  vacillation  —  Concessions 
offered  by  Congress  —  The  crisis  unexpected  —  Possibilities  of  peace 
ful  separation  —  State  sovereignty  —  The  struggle  a  regular  war  — 
Lincoln  as  President — His  object  the  preservation  of  the  Union  — 
War  breaks  out  by  the  capture  of  Fort  Sumter  —  The  military  strength 
of  North  and  South  compared  —  Means  adopted  to  obtain  men  and 


CONTENTS. 

money England  and  the  South  —  Neutrality  of  the  British  govern 
ment Capture    of    Messrs.   Mason    and   Slidell  —  Foreign    nations 

and  the  war  — Strategy  of   the  North  — Chief  scene  of  war— Bull 

Run Northern  military  organization  —  General  McClellan  placed 

in  command  —  McClellan  and  Lincoln  —  Generals  Lee  and  Jackson 

Pope  replaces  McClellan  —  The  equipment  of  the  respective  armies 

Antietam  —  Lincoln  proclaims  emancipation  —  Enlistment  of  ne 
groes Fort  Pillow  —  Burnside  put  in  command  —  Battle  of  Fred- 

ericksburg —  Hooker  replaces  Burnside  —  Is  defeated  —  General  Grant 

Fort    Donelson    taken  —  General  Sherman  —  Battle   of   Shiloh  — 

Vicksburg  —  Farragut  —  New  Orleans  taken  —  Benjamin  Butler's 
proclamation  —  Murfreesborough  —  Character  of  the  battles— The 
Merrimack  and  the  Monitor  —  Blockade  running  — Lee  enters  Penn 
sylvania—Irish  riot  in  New  York  — Battle  of  Gettysburg  —  Fall  of 
Vicksburg  —  The  South  in  straits  —  The  army  of  the  Potomac  — 
Battle  of  the  Wilderness  —  Cold  Harbour  —  Early  attacks  Washing 
ton  —  Sheridan  desolates  the  Shenandoah  Valley  —  Mechanical  skill 
displayed  in  Sheridan's  campaign  —  Hood  replaces  Johnston  —  At 
lanta  falls  —  Savannah  and  Charleston  surrender  —  Nashville  —  Rich 
mond  evacuated  —  Lee  surrenders  at  Appomattox  —  Lincoln  re-elected 
—  And  murdered  —  His  statesmanship  —  Humanity  on  the  two 
sides  —  The  Sanitary  Commission  —  Democracy  and  war  —  The 
war  and  the  constitution  —  Little  or  no  disturbance  of  life  at 
the  North  —  No  military  usurpation  —  Finances  —  Effects  on  the 
South  —  Economical  evils  — War  literature  —  Cost  of  the  war- 

Foreign    questions  —  The    Alabama     question  —  Reconstruction 

Lincoln's  views  —  Amnesty  —  Andrew  Johnson  —  The   status  of 

the  negro Pages  221-301 


CHAPTER    I. 

THE   COLONIES. 

centuries  ago,  Christopher  Columbus,  one  of  the  1492. 
Italian  mariners  whom  the  decline  of  their  own  repub 
lics  had  put  at  the  service  of  the  world  and  of  adventure, 
seeking  for  Spain  a  westward  passage  to  the  Indies  as  a 
set-off  against  the  achievements  of  Portuguese  discoverers 
eastwards,  lighted  on  America.  The  new  continent  was 
thus'  discovered  by  the  man  who  had  staked  most  on  the 
belief  that  no  such  continent  existed,  and  that  the  way  to 
the  Indies  was  open  by  sea.  That  the  daring  barques  of 
the  Northmen  had  long  before  found  their  way  from 
Greenland  to  the  coast  of  North  America  is  likely,  though 
not  certain.  What  is  certain  is  that  nothing  more  came, 
or  in  that  age  could  come,  of  their  visit  than  of  the  visit 
of  a  flock  of  sea-gulls.  The  basement  of  an  old  mill  at 
Newport,  which  fancy  turned  into  a  Norse  fortress,  the 
Dighton  rock,  on  which  fancy  traced  Norse  runes,  the 
dykes  at  Watertown,  in  Massachusetts,  in  which  fancy 
still  sees  the  defences  of  the  Norse  city  of  Norumbega, 
only  attest  the  yearnings  of  a  new  nation  for  antiquity. 

Columbus  sailed  in  the  age  of  enterprise  and  discovery, 
of  re-awakened  intellect  and  revived  learning,  of  universal 
curiosity  and  romantic  aspiration.  He  was  in  every  way 
a  typical  man  of  his  generation.  He  displayed  in  the  high- 


2  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

est  degree  that  daring  spirit  of  adventure  which  could  put 
forth  in  a  tiny  caravel  without  chart,  quadrant,  or  even  a 
full  acquaintance  with  the  compass,  over  the  wide  and  wild 
Atlantic  to  an  unknown  shore ;  and  a  shore  which,  when 
found,  might  teem  with  perils  and  be  the  abode  of  mon 
sters  or  of  demons.  Humanity,  since  that  time,  has  ad 
vanced  in  many  ways ;  but  it  has  hardly  advanced  in 
fortitude.  Columbus  was  also  a  devotee  of  a  religion  with 
more  in  it  of  Rome  and  of  the  Crusades  than  of  the  Gos 
pel,  and  with  more  of  the  forms  of  devotion  than  of  the 
spirit.  Morally  he  was  a  type  of  the  age  which  came 
between  the  fall  of  the  Catholic  and  the  rise  of  the  Prot 
estant  faith,  and  had  for  its  head  Alexander  VI,  the  moral 
monster  of  the  Papacy,  whose  hand  signed  the  Bull  which 
divided  the  new  world  between  two  Catholic  powers.  In 
his  youth  it  seems  he  served  on  board  a  pirate  fleet.  He 
began  his  intercourse  with  the  natives  of  America  by  kid 
napping,  and  he  gave  the  word  for  the  opening  of  the 
slave  trade.  His  dealings  with  his  own  companions  were 
equivocal.  He  was  always  in  greedy  quest  of  gold,  though 
he  professed,  and  perhaps  believed,  that  he  meant  to  use 
the  gold  in  a  crusade.  He  became  the  father  of  a  line  of 
adventurers  who,  like  himself,  were  gold-seekers  or  seekers 
of  lucre,  gilding  their  rapacity  with  the  same  profession 
of  zeal  for  the  extension  of  religion,  who  sacked  Mexico 
and  Peru,  trampled  to  pieces  there,  under  the  hoofs  of 
conquest,  the  highest  development  of  Indian  civilization, 
worked  to  death  the  soft  inhabitants  of  the  American 
islands,  and  replaced  them  by  the  importation  of  African 
slaves.  None  of  these  adventurers  looked  upon  America 
1565.  as  a  new  home,  or  thought  of  founding  a  nation.  The 
Huguenots  might  have  founded  a  nation  in  Florida  had 


i.  THE   COLONIES. 

they  not  been  massacred  by  the  Spaniards.  Missionary 
enterprise,  to  some  extent,  accompanied  and  redeemed 
the  gold-seeking.  It  founded  the  Jesuit  utopia  in  Para-  1527 
guay,  and  in  the  establishment  of  French  Canada  went  1550 
hand  in  hand  with  that  kingly  thirst  of  dominion  which, 
rather  than  colonization  in  the  proper  and  beneficent 
sense,  was  the  dominant  motive  of  French  enterprise  in 
North  America.  But  the  aim  of  the  Jesuit  was  not  to 
found  a  nation.  In  the  settlement  of  Virginia  by  Sir  1585 
Walter  Raleigh,  and,  when  Raleigh's  romantic  enterprise  ^37 
had  failed,  by  a  company  of  commercial  adventurers,  lucre, 
if  not  gold-seeking,  was  still  the  predominant  motive. 
Of  a  hundred  and  forty-three  settlers  sent  out,  a  large 
proportion  were  broken-down  gentlemen  seeking  to  repair 
their  fortunes ;  a  few  only  were  labourers  or  mechanics ; 
the  rest  were  servants.  To  show  how  faint  was  their  pur 
pose  of  settlement,  they  brought  no  women.  The  subse 
quent  reinforcements  were  of  the  same  kind,  with  some 
goldsmiths  and  refiners  to  help  in  seeking  for  gold  where 
no  gold  was.  A  ship  went  home  laden  with  shining  mica, 
which  was  mistaken  for  gold.  Food  these  colonists  had  to 
beg  or  steal  from  the  Indians.  To  the  crew  of  vagabonds 
were  afterwards  added  jail-birds.  Convicts  were  offered 
their  choice  between  the  gallows  and  Virginia,  and  some, 
we  are  told,  chose  the  gallows.  Only  by  the  personal  force  1607. 
and  genius  of  John  Smith,  the  one  true  captain,  who  com 
pelled  gentlemen  to  wield  the  axe,  telling"  them  that  if 
they  would  not  work  they  should  not  eat,  was  the  colony 
saved  from  dissolution.  It  had  been  started  on  the  false 
principle  of  joint  stock  industry,  which  deprives  labour  of 
its  mainspring.  Its  place,  Jamestown,  has  long  been  deso 
late,  and  only  fragments  of  ruin  mark  the  site.  In  these 


4  THE  UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

days  steam  carries  all  the  implements  of  husbandry,  now 
brought  to  marvellous  perfection,  and  all  needful  stores, 
with  the  emigrant  into  his  field  of  settlement.  In  those 
days  colonization  was  a  death-struggle  with  nature.  Some 
sustaining  motive  higher  than  gain  was  necessary  to  give 
man  the  victory  and  enable  him  to  make  for  himself  a  new 
home  in  the  wilderness,  arid  to  found  a  nation. 

Such  a  motive,  together  with  the  necessary  habits  of 
labour  and  powers  of  endurance,  was  present  in  the  little 
train  of  emigrants  who,  after  beating  up  and  down  for 
some  days  upon  a  bleak  and  wintry  coast  and  receiving 
as  their  welcome  to  it  a  volley  of  Indian  arrows,  dis 
embarked  from  the  Mayflower  on  the  22nd  of  December, 
1620.  Their  landing  was  on  the  shore  to  which  John 
Smith,  its  first  explorer,  had  given  the  name  of  New 
England,  at  a  spot  which  they  named  Plymouth,  after 
the  English  port  of  that  name  from  which  they  had 
sailed.  Setting  rhetorical  exaggeration  aside,  we  need 
not  doubt  that  in  watching  that  sad  yet  hopeful  proces 
sion  of  men,  women,  and  children,  we  are  witnessing  one 
of  the  great  events  and  one  of  the  heroic  scenes  of 
history.  The  story  of  these  emigrants  is  well  known. 
They  were  dissenters  from  the  Established  Church  of 
England,  with  simple  hearts  full  of  the  intense  faith  and 
zeal  inspired  in  those  days  by  the  new  revelation  of  the 
pure  Gospel.  They  had  fled  from  the  emissaries  of 
1608.  church  law,  first  to  Holland.  There  they  had  found 
themselves  surrounded  by  a  community  highly  commer 
cial,  whose  manners  their  austere  simplicity  deemed 
corrupting,  which  did  not  strictly  keep  the  Sabbath,  and 
into  whose  worldliness  their  children  were  in  danger 
of  being  drawn.  They  feared  also  the  loss  of  their 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  5 

nationality,  to  which,  though  persecuted  in  England, 
they  clung.  They  had  then  determined  to  seek  a  home 
beyond  the  Atlantic  where  they  might  enjoy  their  religion 
uncontaminated  and  in  peace.  A  chartered  company,  the 
usual  organ  of  commercial  venture  in  those  days,  formed 
the  English  basis  of  their  enterprise  and  the  source  of 
needful  supplies. 

The  Plymouth  pilgrims,  landing  in  mid-winter  on  a 
grim  coast,  underwent  the  severest  sufferings.  They 
were  ill  sheltered ;  they  had  no  bread,  and  were  reduced 
to  shellfish  for  food.  More  than  half  their  number  died. 
At  one  time  only  seven  of  them  were  left  strong  enough 
to  tend  the  sick.  It  seems  that  they  were  saved  from 
the  Indian  tomahawk  only  by  a  distemper  which  happened 
to  prevail  among  the  Indians.  To  use  their  own  words, 
"  all  great  and  honourable  actions  are  accompanied  with 
great  difficulties,  and  must  be  both  undertaken  and  con 
firmed  with  answerable  courages."  "  It  is  not,"  they  had 
said,  "  with  us  as  with  other  men,  whom  small  things  can 
discourage  or  small  discontents  cause  to  wish  themselves 
home  again."  Their  language  is  instinct  with  the  simple 
heroism  of  their  enterprise.  "  Let  it  not  be  grievous  to 
you,"  said  their  friends  in  England,  "  that  you  have  been 
instruments  to  break  the  ice  for  others ;  the  honour  shall 
be  yours  to  the  world's  end."  To  the  world's  end  the 
honour  is  theirs.  If  Columbus  discovered  the  new  conti 
nent,  they  discovered  the  new  world. 

Before  landing,  the  pilgrims,  "  seeing  that  some  among 
them  were  not  well  affected  to  concord,"  had  drawn  up 
this  voluntary  compact :  — 

"  In  the  name  of  God,  amen ;  we,  whose  names  are 
underwritten,  the  loyal  subjects  of  our  dread  sovereign 


6  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

King  James,  .  .  .  having  undertaken,  for  the  glory  of 
God  and  advancement  of  the  Christian  faith,  and  honour 
of  our  King  and  country,  a  voyage  to  plant  the  first 
colony  in  the  northern  parts  of  Virginia,  do  by  these 
presents,  solemnly  and  mutually,  in  the  presence  of  God, 
and  one  of  another,  covenant  and  combine  ourselves 
together  into  a  civil  body  politic,  for  our  better  ordering 
and  preservation  and  furtherance  of  the  ends  aforesaid ; 
and  by  virtue  hereof  to  enact,  constitute,  and  frame  such 
just  and  equal  laws,  ordinances,  acts,  constitutions,  and 
offices,  from  time  to  time,  as  shall  be  thought  most  meet 
and  convenient  for  the  general  good  of  the  colony.  Unto 
which  we  promise  all  due  submission  and  obedience." 

It  is  true  that  this  covenant  was  not  a  political  mani 
festo.  It  is  not  less  true  that  it  heralded  a  polity  of 
self-government,  and  may  thus  rank  among  the  great 
documents  of  history.  It  breathes  good-will  to  the  land 
which  the  pilgrims  had  left,  though  the  rulers  of  that 
land  had  cast  them  out.  The  Puritan  exile  did  not  say 
"  Farewell,  Babylon,"  but  "  Farewell,  dear  England." 
Unhappily  these,  in  common  with  other  colonists  of  the 
period,  retained  not  only  their  love  of  the  old  land,  but 
their  political  tie  to  it.  They  deemed  themselves  still 
liegemen  of  a  sovereign  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic. 
This  created  a  relation  false  from  the  beginning.  Herein 
lay  the  fatal  seeds  of  misunderstanding,  of  encroach 
ment  on  the  side  of  the  home  government,  of  revolt  on 
that  of  the  growing  colony,  and  ultimately  of  revolution. 
The  Hellenic  colonist  had  gone  forth  to  make  his  home 
in  a  new  land,  taking  with  him  the  sacred  fire  from  the 
altar-hearth  of  his  native  city,  but  free  from  any  political 
tie.  His  only  bond  to  his  native  city  was  that  of  filial 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  7 

affection,  gracefully  expressed  in  honours  paid  to  her 
representatives.  The  Hellenic  colony  was  a  colony  in  the 
true  sense  of  the  word,  not  a  dependency.  The  English 
colony  unhappily  was  a  dependency,  and  when  it  grew 
strong  enough  to  spurn  dependence  there  was  a  bond  to 
be  broken  which  was  not  likely  to  be  broken  without 
violence  and  a  breach  of  affection.  Dependence  was  the 
result  of  two  notions  combined,  that  of  the  territorial  right 
of  discovery,  and  that  of  personal  and  indefeasible  alle 
giance.  Let  a  mariner  land  and  set  up  a  flag  on  a  strange 
shore,  let  him  even  sight  that  shore  from  his  vessel,  the 
whole  region  thenceforth,  according  to  the  European  law 
of  nations,  belonged  to  his  sovereign,  and  was  that  sov 
ereign's  to  grant  to  whom  he  pleased.  His  Majesty  of  1606. 
England  by  his  charter  granted  North  America,  so  far  as  it 
was  then  known,  between  certain  degrees  of  latitude,  in 
full  property,  with  exclusive  rights  of  jurisdiction,  settle 
ment,  and  traffic,  to  certain  persons  incorporated  respec 
tively  as  the  London  and  Plymouth  Companies.  The 
Pope's  pretension  to  divide  the  new  world  between  Catho 
lic  powers  was  hardly  more  baseless.  From  the  feudal 
system  came  down  the  idea  of  personal  and  indefeasible 
allegiance,  with  the  lingering  traces  of  which  international 
law  and  diplomacy  in  our  own  day  have  had  to  deal.  This 
was  the  beginning  of  woes,  the  full  measure  of  which  came 
in  1765. 

The  foundation  of  New  Plymouth  was  followed  by  that 
of  Massachusetts,  the  great  Puritan  colony  of  all,  and  the 
leading  shoot  of  American  civilization,  which  presently 
drew  to  it  New  Plymouth,  while  it  threw  out  from  it,  in 
different  ways  and  partly  by  repulsion,  the  off-shoots  which 
became  Connecticut,  Rhode  Island,  New  Hampshire,  and 


8  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

Vermont.  The  founders  of  Massachusetts  were  not,  when 
they  came  out,  Independents,  like  the  company  of  the 
Mayflower,  but  Puritans  in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term, 
that  is,  members  of  the  Church  of  England  who  desired  to 
remain  within  her  pale,  but  to  purify  her  from  the  vestiges 
of  Rome,  and  at  the  same  time  to  uplift  her  to  a  higher 
standard  of  Christian  life.  They  even  anxiously  disclaimed 
any  intention  of  separation.  "  They  esteemed  it  their  hon 
our,"  they  said,  "  to  call  the  Church  of  England  their 
dear  mother,  and  could  not  part  from  their  native  country, 
where  she  specially  resided,  without  much  sadness  of  heart 
and  many  tears  in  their  eyes ;  ever  acknowledging  that 
such  hope  and  part  as  they  had  attained  in  the  common 
salvation  they  had  received  in  her  bosom  and  sucked  from 
her  breasts."  But  practical  divorce  from  the  Anglican 
hierarchy  and  ordinances,  together  with  the  liberating  air 
of  the  new  world,  soon  made  them,  like  the  Plymouth 

1629.  emigrants,  Independents.  From  Charles  I,  who  was  no 
doubt  glad  to  see  the  Puritan  spirit  carried  off  by  emigra 
tion,  the  Massachusetts  Company  received  a  liberal  charter, 
which  became  the  palladium  of  advancing  independence. 
The  colony  was  an  object  of  fervent  interest  to  the  Puri 
tans  at  home,  and  was  recruited  with  some  of  their  best 

1633.  blood.  Hither  the  excellent  Cotton  led  from  Boston  in 
Lincolnshire,  and  the  fair  church  that  rises  over  it,  a 
part  of  his  flock  to  a  Boston  which  soon  became,  and  has 
remained,  the  centre  of  New  England  and  the  focus  of 

1633.  New  England  civilization.  Hither  came  Hugh  Peters, 
the  chaplain  that  was  to  be  of  the  regicide  republic. 

1633.  Hither  for  a  time  came  Henry  Vane,  as  has  been  said, 
"  young  in  years,  but  not  yet  in  sage  counsel  old,"  for 
he  brought  with  him  a  disquieting  ambition.  The  first 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  9 

governor  was  Winthrop,  a  wealthy  Sussex  gentleman,  who 
left  his  manor  house  at  the  age  of  forty-two  to  help  in 
planting  a  Gospel  kingdom  in  the  new  world.  He  was  a 
noble  specimen  of  the  Puritan  character,  uniting  with  its 
force  the  gentle  grace  which  Mrs.  Hutchinson  has  por 
trayed  in  her  picture  of  Colonel  Hutchinson ;  a  wise  coun 
sellor,  skilful  as  Hampden  in  the  management  of  men,  and 
in  all  distractions  piously  serene.  Endicott  and  Dudley 
were  Puritans  of  the  sterner  type. 

Besides  Cotton,  other  clergymen  came,  highly  educated 
at  Oxford  or  Cambridge ;  more  from  Cambridge  than 
from  Oxford,  because  Cambridge  lay  in  the  eastern  coun 
ties,  the  home  of  Cromwell  and  the  Ironsides.  The 
inflow  of  Puritan  life  did  not  cease  till  the  rising  of 
the  English  nation  against  Charles  and  Laud  gave  the 
party  hope  and  work  at  home. 

In  Massachusetts  also  the  first  settlers  had  their  suffer 
ings  to  undergo  on  that  bleak  coast,  though  not  such  suf 
ferings  as  were  undergone  by  the  founders  of  Plymouth, 
the  Massachusetts  colony  being  better  provided  with 
funds  and  more  assisted  from  home.  Whatever  was  to 
be  borne  they  bore.  Like  their  precursors  at  Plymouth, 
they  were  bent  on  "laying  some  good  foundation,  or  at 
least  making  some  way  thereto,  for  the  propagating  and 
advancing  the  Gospel  and  the  kingdom  of  Christ  in  those 
remote  parts  of  the  world ;  yea,  even  though  they  should 
be  but  as  stepping  stones  unto  others  for  the  performing 
of  so  great  a  work." 

The  Puritan  commonwealth  was  a  theocracy.  It  was 
mainly  for  the  purpose  of  founding  a  Christian  state  that 
these  men  had  given  up  all  and  gone  forth  into  the 
wilderness.  No  one  could  be  a  citizen  of  Massachusetts 


10  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP 

who  was  not  in  close  communion  with  one  of  the 
churches.  The  churches  were  organized  on  the  Con 
gregational  principle,  forming  a  group,  each  member  oj' 
which  was  independent  of  the  rest  and  chose  its  own 
pastor.  But  they  were  bound  together  by  complete  sym 
pathy,  identity  of  doctrine  and  of  system  was  preserved, 
and  discipline  was  practically  enforced  by  them  in  con 
cert.  Baptism  was  limited  to  the  children  of  those  who 
were  in  close  communion,  and  only  to  those  who  were 5 
in  close  communion  was  the  sacrament  of  the  Lord's 
Supper  administered.  Every  citizen  was  required  to 
contribute  to  the  maintenance  of  a  church.  Thus,  not 
only  was  there  a  union  of  church  and  state,  but  church 
and  state  were  one.  This  was  still  the  religious  ideal  of 
the  time,  however  far  men  might  desire  to  carry  church 
reform.  It  has  been  the  ideal  in  our  own  day  of  such 
a  liberal  as  Dr.  Arnold.  Puritan  theocracy,  though  strict, 
and  sure  to  melt  away  when  the  sun  of  freedom  had 
mounted  higher  in  the  heaven,  was  not  reactionary  or 
obscurantist.  It  had  for  its  rule  the  Bible,  but  the  Bible 
interpreted  by  reason.  It  owed  paramount  allegiance 
not  to  authority  but  to  truth.  Robinson,  the  adored 
pastor  of  the  Plymouth  exiles,  had  charged  them  at  part 
ing,  before  God  and  all  the  angels,  to  "  follow  him  no 
further  than  he  followed  Christ ;  and  if  God  should  reveal 
anything  to  them  by  any  other  instrument  of  his,  to  be 
as  ready  to  receive  it  as  ever  they  were  to  receive  any 
truth  by  his  ministry ;  for  he  was  very  confident  the 
Lord  had  more  truth  and  light  yet  to  break  forth  out  of 
His  holy  Word."  Of  light  and  truth  to  break  forth  from 
nature  read  by  science  beyond  God's  word  the  Puritan 
pastor  in  those  days  could  have  no  thought. 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  11 

Reformers  may  wish  to  arrest  reform  at  their  own  line, 
but  they  set  in  action  the  forces  which  will  carry  it 
further.  The  clergy  were  the  leaders,  to  a  considerable 
extent  they  were  the  masters,  of  the  Puritan  society  and 
commonwealth.  But  they  were  not  mere  priests.  They 
were  well  educated;  some  of  them  were  very  learned, 
and  could  not  fail  to  have  their  share  of  the  liberality  of 
learning.  Their  ascendancy  was  moral  and  intellec 
tual;  it  was  not  that  of  caste  or  of  thaumaturgy. 
Very  early  Massachusetts  founded,  out  of  her  poverty  1636. 
and  in  troublous  times,  the  University  of  Harvard,  which 
is  now  the  glory  of  the  literary  republic.  Harvard's  1700. 
present  rival,  Yale,  was  founded  in  New  Haven  later, 
yet  at  a  date  early  as  compared  with  the  material 
progress  of  the  colony.  Massachusetts  led  the  world 
in  the  institution  of  common  schools,  to  which  all  citizens 
were  required  to  contribute,  and  which  all  citizens  were 
required  to  use.  Common  schools  they  were  in  the  true 
sense  of  the  term  in  that  realm  of  equality,  used  as  well 
as  maintained  by  all.  They  would  also  be  in  the  highest 
degree  religious.  The  reason  given  for  instituting  them 
was  that  the  children  might  be  able  to  read  the  Scriptures 
aright,  notwithstanding  the  wiles  of  Satan,  whose  favour 
ite  device  was  misinterpretation.  But  the  effects  of 
general  education  would  not  be  limited  by  the  ostensible 
purpose.  Congregations  were  intelligent,  and  pastors 
could  maintain  their  influence  only  by  addressing  them 
selves  to  intelligence.  A  printing  press,  the  first  on  the 
North  American  continent,  was  set  up  at  Cambridge  in 
1640.  Its  first  fruit  was  a  metrical  version  of  the  Psalms 
by  some  New  England  pastors  which,  if  it  was  not  tune 
ful,  was  new  and  showed  literary  activity,  at  least  in 
the  religious  line. 


12  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

When  the  more  advanced  or  wilder  sectaries,  to  whom 
an  age  of  religious  fermentation  gave  birth  in  swarms, 
intruded  themselves  into  the  theocracy  of  Massachusetts, 
they  were  driven  out.  In  this  there  could  hardly  be 
said  to  be  injustice  so  long  as  there  was  no  cruelty. 
The  Puritans  had  gone  out  into  the  wilderness  to  found 
a  religious  commonwealth  after  their  own  hearts ;  in 
founding  it  they  had  undergone  great  sufferings,  and 
many  of  them  had  perished.  It  was  their  homestead, 
and  they  had  a  right  to  keep  it,  as  they  had  a  right  tc 
keep  their  places  of  worship,  to  themselves.  This  they 
did ;  at  the  worst  they  never  were  guilty  of  forcible  con 
version,  nor  did  they  rack  conscience  like  the  Inquisition 

1631.  Of  the  intruders  the  most  memorable  was  Roger 
Williams,  a  quick-witted,  warm-hearted,  and  somewhat 
flighty  Welshman,  who  came  preaching  absolute  freedom 
of  conscience,  and  denouncing  theocratic  government.  A 
political  as  well  as  a  religious  innovator,  he  denied  the 
right  of  the  King  to  grant  the  land  and  thus  impugned 
the  titles  of  the  colonists.  In  his  zeal  against  idolatry  he 
compromised  the  loyalty  of  the  colony  by  persuading  the 
governor  to  cut  the  cross,  as  a  Popish  emblem,  out  of 

1636.  the  flag.  He  was  expelled  after  much  tribulation,  and 
went  to  found  Rhode  Island  on  the  principle  of  perfect 
religious  freedom  and  complete  separation  of  church  from 
state  of  which,  partly  perhaps  schooled  by  persecution,  he 
had  become  the  memorable  champion.  His  colony  may 
boast  itself  the  first  of  all  commonwealths  in  which  liberty 
of  conscience  was  the  law.  Its  political  disorders,  the 
consequence  of  the  motley  enthusiasm  which  it  drew 
to  it,  for  a  time  furnished  the  theocracy  against  which 
its  founder  had  revolted  with  a  theme  for  warning  against 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  13 

religious  anarchy.  But  the  principle  had  been  pro 
claimed  and  Rhode  Island  was  not  long  in  showing  the 
world  that  civil  society  could  subsist  and  political  order 
could  be  maintained  without  imposing  shackles  on  spirit 
ual  life. 

Mrs.  Ann  Hutchinson  also  presented  herself  in  Massa-  1634. 
chusetts.  Her  opinions  appear  to  have  been  antinomian, 
certainly  they  were  anti-clerical  and  anti-theocratic.  From 
the  active  part  which  she  took  and  the  leadership  to 
which  she  aspired,  notwithstanding  her  sex,  in  theological 
agitation,  she  may  be  regarded  as  a  harbinger  of  the 
"revolt  of  woman."  She  had  evidently  great  power  of 
winning  disciples.  Vane,  who  was  in  New  England  at 
the  time,  was  drawn  to  her;  and  it  seems  to  have  been 
partly  in  this  way  that  he  was  led  into  an  antagonism 
to  the  ruling  party  in  Massachusetts  which,  combined 
probably  with  the  attractions  of  the  larger  field,  sent  him 
back  to  the  old  country.  Mrs.  Hutchinson  also  was  1637. 
banished.  Samuel  Gorton  was  another  eccentric  spirit 
who  could  not  brook  theocratic  rule.  He  held  among 
other  heresies  that  there  was  no  such  place  as  heaven  or 
hell,  a  doctrine  for  which  the  time  was  not  ripe.  Disturb 
ing  the  existing  order  and  defying  the  rulers,  he,  with 
his  followers,  was  convicted  of  blasphemy  and  with  more 
cruelty  expelled.  He  carried  his  complaint  to  England,  1634. 
as  afterwards  did  other  sufferers  by  the  rigour  of  theo 
cracy,  compromising  thereby  the  cherished  independence 
of  Massachusetts.  Baptists  also  when  they  found  their 
way  into  the  colony  were  regarded  and  suffered  as  dis 
turbers  of  religious  order.  They  carried  with  them, 
however  undeservedly,  the  taint  of  the  social  anarchy 
and  war  produced  by  the  wild  uprisings  of  the  Ana 
baptists  in  Europe. 


14  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

The  worst  case,  and  the  shame  of  the  theocracy,  is 
1656  that  of  the  Quakers.  Quakers  were  not  at  first  harmless 
1660  People  of  the  inner  light  with  a  prim  dress  and  a  precise 
language  of  their  own.  They  were  sectaries  of  the 
wildest  kind,  and  were  sometimes  guilty  in  their  religious 
ecstasy  of  indecency  and  even  of  outrage.  They  railed 
against  church  authority ;  they  forced  themselves  into 
places  of  worship  and  disturbed  the  service ;  they  went 
about  naked  to  testify  against  sin.  A  Quakeress  in 
Massachusetts  thrust  herself  upon  a  meeting  house  clad 
in  sack  cloth  and  with  her  face  painted  black  to  repre 
sent  the  coming  of  the  small-pox.  Quakers  were  sternly 
bidden  to  depart ;  laws  making  them  liable  to  flogging 
and  imprisonment,  to  the  cropping  of  their  ears,  and  the 
piercing  of  their  tongues  with  hot  irons,  were  passed 
and  in  some  cases  cruelly  carried  into  execution.  In 
defiance  of  these  penalties  they  still  came,  till  at  last  a 
law  was  passed  banishing  them  on  pain  of  death.  They 
returned,  eager  for  martyrdom,  and  four  of  them  were 
hanged.  But  the  touching  demeanour  of  the  sufferers 
moved  the  hearts  of  the  people.  Public  sentiment  re 
volted.  Public  sentiment  in  Spain  did  not  revolt  against 
the  autos-da-fe.  The  treatment  of  the  Quakers  by  the 
Puritans  is  without  defence  or  excuse,  except  such  as 
the  fallacies  of  the  age,  the  fear  that  religion  would 
perish  in  an  anarchy  of  sects,  and  Quaker  extravagance, 
which  seemed  to  menace  social  as  well  as  religious  order, 
might  afford.  But  it  is  wrong  to  say  that  the  Puritans 
of  Massachusetts  left  the  mother  country  to  assert  the 
principle  of  liberty  of  conscience  and  then  shamefully 
violated  that  principle  by  their  own  practice.  They  came 
out,  not  to  assert  liberty  of  conscience,  a  principle  which 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  16 

had  not  dawned  on  their  minds,  but  to  found  a  religious 
commonwealth  on  their  own  model  and  in  it  live  the 
spiritual  life  to  which  they  aspired.  Rhode  Island,  how 
ever,  had  now  an  opportunity  of  showing  her  loyalty  to 
her  new  born  principle  of  religious  freedom.  To  the 
appeal  of  Massachusetts  for  co-operation  in  putting  down 
the  Quakers  the  people  of  Rhode  Island  replied  "  that 
they  had  no  law  among  them  whereby  to  punish  any  for 
only  declaring  by  words  their  minds  and  understandings 
concerning  the  things  and  ways  of  God  as  to  salvation  and 
an  eternal  condition."  They  admitted  that  the  doctrines 
of  the  Quakers  tended  "to  very  absolute  cutting  down 
and  overturning  relations  and  civil  government  among 
men,"  but  said  that  experience  taught  them  that  "  in  those 
places 'where  these  people  aforesaid,  in  this  Colony,  are 
most  of  all  suffered  to  declare  themselves  freely,  and  are 
only  opposed  by  arguments  and  discourse,  there  they 
the  least  of  all  desire  to  come,"  inasmuch  as  they  delight 
"to  be  persecuted  by  civil  powers,  and  when  they  are 
so  they  are  like  to  gain  more  adherence  by  the  conceit 
of  their  patient  sufferings  than  by  consent  to  their  per 
nicious  sayings."  In  one  respect  the  Rhode  Islanders 
were  mistaken  ;  the  Quakers  remained  among  them  and 
added  to  the  disturbance  of  their  settlement.  Perhaps 
Massachusetts  as  the  school  of  political  and  social  order, 
and  Rhode  Island  as  the  school  of  freedom  of  opinion, 
were  unconsciously  supplements  of  each  other  till  the 
fulness  of  time  in  which  the  harmony  of  the  two  prin 
ciples  should  be  revealed. 

On  its  political  side  Puritanism  was  everywhere  in 
spirit  republican,  the  tendency  to  political  liberty  going 
hand  in  hand  with  religious  independence.  The  mon- 


16  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

archy,  moreover,  the  court,  and  the  aristocracy  had  been 
left  on  the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  Unlike  the  depen 
dencies  of  Spain  or  France,  Massachusetts  was  from  the 
outset  practically  a  republic,  albeit  retaining  her  alle 
giance  to  the  King  of  England,  founding  her  rights  upon 
his  charter,  included  in  his  declarations  of  war  and  htt 
treaties  of  peace,  regarding  his  law  as  the  basis  of  her 
own,  and  recognizing  his  privy  council  as  her  ultimate- 
court  of  appeal.  Her  polity  was  based  on  the  town 
ship,  that  elementary  cell  and  school  of  public  life  abou^ 
which  much  has  been  said  by  De  Tocqueville  and  othe:* 
political  philosophers.  The  townships  were  afterwards 
gathered  into  counties,  forming  another  step  in  tho 
ascending  scale  of  self-government.  At  the  centre  was 
an  elective  and  representative  assembly.  The  execu 
tive  was  an  elective  Governor.  Representation  went 
with  taxation.  But  the  republic  was  not  at  first  demo 
cratic.  Its  chiefs  in  fact  repudiated  democracy  as  not  a 
fit  government  either  for  church  or  state.  They  asked, 
if  the  people  were  to  govern,  who  was  to  be  governed? 
Some  of  them  would  fain  have  had  all  offices  held  for 
life.  Winthrop  and  Dudley  did  actually  enjoy  almost 
a  life  term.  There  was  no  idle  aristocracy ;  all  alike 
were  workers,  but  social  distinctions  were  kept  up.  The 
order  of  gentlemen  was  recognized,  it  was  exempted  from 
corporal  punishment,  the  title  of  Mr.  was  confined  to 
it,  "  Goodman "  being  the  title  of  a  commoner.  The 
principal  families  had  the  chief  seats  in  church ;  their 
sons  ranked  first  among  the  students  at  Harvard.  "  Con 
cerning  liberty,"  said  Governor  Winthrop  in  a  homily 
against  democratic  turbulence,  "  I  observe  a  great  mistake 
in  the  country.  There  is  a  twofold  liberty,  natural  (I 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  17 

mean  as  our  nature  is  now  corrupt)  and  civil,  or  federal. 
The  first  is  common  to  man  with  beasts  and  other 
creatures.  By  this,  man,  as  he  stands  in  relation  to  man, 
simply  hath  liberty  to  do  what  he  lists ;  it  is  a  liberty  to 
evil  as  well  as  to  good.  This  liberty  is  incompatible  and 
inconsistent  with  authority,  and  cannot  endure  the  least 
restraint  of  the  most  just  authority.  The  exercise  and 
maintaining  of  this  liberty  makes  men  to  grow  more 
evil,  and,  in  time,  to  be  worse  than  brute  beasts :  omnes 
sumus  licentia  deteriores  — we  all  become  worse  by  licence. 
That  is  the  great  enemy  of  truth  and  peace,  that  wild 
beast,  which  all  the  laws  of  God  are  bent  against,  to 
restrain  and  subdue  it.  The  other  kind  of  liberty  I  call 
civil  or  federal ;  it  may  also  be  called  moral  in  reference 
to  the  covenant  between  God  and  man  in  the  moral 
law,  and  the  political  covenants  and  constitutions  among 
men  themselves.  This  liberty  is  the  proper  end  and 
object  of  authority,  and  cannot  subsist  without  it,  and 
it  is  a  liberty  to  that  only  which  is  just,  good,  and  honest. 
This  liberty  you  are  to  stand  for  at  the  hazard  not  only 
of  your  goods,  but  of  your  lives,  if  need  be.  Whatsoever 
crosseth  this  is  not  authority,  but  a  distemper  thereof. 
This  liberty  is  maintained  and  exercised  in  a  way  of 
subjection  to  authority ;  it  is  of  the  same  kind  of  liberty 
wherewith  Christ  hath  made  us  free."  Such,  expressed 
by  the  highest  Puritan  authority,  was  the  principle  of  the 
Puritan  commonwealth.  Authority  was  surrounded  with 
as  much  state  as  the  infant  colony  could  afford.  The 
Governor,  it  seems,  was  preceded  by  four  halberdiers. 
When  Lord  Say-and-Sele,  Lord  Brooke,  and  other  Puri 
tan  noblemen  thought  of  coming  out  from  England, 
they  proposed  that  Massachusetts  should  institute  an 


18  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

hereditary  order  of  nobility  forming  an  Upper  House. 
But  this  the  commonwealth  respectfully  declined.  She 
answered  by  the  hand  of  Cotton,  "When  God  blesseth 
any  branch  of  any  noble  or  generous  family  with  a  spirit 
and  gifts  fit  for  government,  it  would  be  a  taking  of 
God's  name  in  vain  to  put  such  a  talent  under  a  bushel, 
and  a  sin  against  the  honour  of  magistracy  to  neglect  such 
in  our  public  elections.  But  if  God  should  not  delight 
to  furnish  some  of  their  posterity  with  gifts  fit  for  magis 
tracy,  we  should  expose  them  rather  to  reproach  anc 
prejudice,  and  the  commonwealth  with  them,  than  exali; 
them  to  honour,  if  we  should  call  them  forth,  when  Goc. 
doth  not,  to  public  authority."  Thus  gently  but  deci 
sively  did  the  new  world  break  with  hereditary  govern 
ment,  and  commit  itself  to  the  principle  of  election.  Buu 
aristocracy,  had  it  been  planted  in  New  England,  could 
never  have  taken  root.  In  the  colony  there  were  no  great 
estates  to  support  peerages.  Of  the  equal  comradeship 
of  Saxon  rovers  English  self-government  was  born ;  in 
the  equal  partnership  of  religious  colonists  after  a  thou 
sand  years  of  monarchy  and  aristocracy  it  was  renewed. 
1627.  The  Company  having  been  transferred  from  England  to 
Massachusetts,  no  tie  to  England  was  left  but  that  of  al 
legiance  to  the  king.  Though  the  Puritan  republic  was 
not  in  its  birth  democratic,  democracy  was  not  long  in. 
raising  its  head  and  foreshadowing  its  destined  empire. 
Town  meetings  were  pretty  certain  to  breed  village  poli 
ticians,  while  the  common  schools  would  foster  equality. 
Elections  were  by  the  democratic  mode  of  ballot.  We  see 
the  rudiment  of  a  democratic  caucus.  Self-taxation  is  the 
political  lever  of  democracy,  and  New  Englanders  jeal 
ously  refused  to  pay  any  taxes  without  representation.  It 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  19 

was  a  democratic  spirit  that  demanded  a  written  code  of 
laws  instead  of  Mosaic  principles  administered  at  the  dis 
cretion  of  the  general  court.  It  was  a  democratic  spirit 
that  successfully  protested  against  life-tenure  of  office.  A 
change  in  the  constitution  dividing  the  general  court, 
which  had  been  a  single  council,  into  two  branches,  one 
of  which  was  popular,  had  its  origin  in  a  democratic 
agitation  caused  by  what  the  people  resented  as  an  oligar 
chical  decision  of  the  council  in  the  great  case  of  Mrs. 
Sherman's  sow.  We  have  here  a  glimmering  of  the 
conflict  to  come  in  after  times  between  the  "  classes  "  and 
the  "  masses."  "  He,"  Mrs.  Sherman's  antagonist  in  the 
suit,  "  being  accounted  a  rich  man  and  she  a  poor  woman, 
this  so  wrought  with  the  people,  as  being  blinded  with 
unreasonable  compassion,  they  could  not  see  or  would  not 
allow  justice  her  reasonable  course."  These  are  the  words 
of  a  governor  opposed  to  democracy,  yet  they  are  likely  to 
have  been  true.  A  feeling  of  the  deputies  of  the  town 
ships  against  the  central  power,  likewise  premonitory  in 
its  way,  seems  also  to  have  played  its  part.  To  the 
learned  and  revered  Cotton,  who  held  that  democracy 
was  not  a  fit  government  for  church  or  state,  was  opposed 
the  learned  and  revered  Thomas  Hooker,  who  maintained 
that  "  the  foundation  of  authority  is  laid  in  the  free  con 
sent  of  the  people,  that  the  choice  of  the  public  magistrates 
belongs  to  the  people  of  God's  own  allowance,  and  that 
they  who  have  the  power  to  appoint  officers  and  magis 
trates  have  the  right  also  to  set  the  bounds  and  limitations 
of  the  power  and  place  unto  which  they  call  them." 
These  sentiments  Hooker  and  his  friends  embodied  in  the 
constitution  of  Connecticut,  a  settlement  which  was  in 
some  measure  a  democratic  secession  from  Massachusetts, 


20  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

and  may  thus  claim  to  be  the  cradle  of  American  demo 
cracy  as  Rhode  Island  may  claim  to  be  the  cradle  of  liberty 
of  conscience.  The  constitution  of  Connecticut  has  been 
pronounced  the  first  written  constitution  known  to  history 
which  created  a  government.  This  assertion  may  be  a 
little  hazardous  with  regard  to  ancient  Greece  and  Rome, 
possibly  with  regard  to  the  Italian  republics ;  it  is  certainly 
true  with  regard  to  America.  It  is  true,  and  it  is  highly 
important.  We  have  passed  from  the  world  of  unwritten 
to  that  of  written  constitutions,  from  a  world  of  govern 
ment  by  usage,  tradition,  and  chartered  privileges  wrested 
from  kings,  to  a  world  of  government  by  public  reason 
embodied  in  codes  of  political  law. 

In  1642  the  federal  principle  appears  on  the  scene  where 
it  was  destined  in  the  fulness  of  time  to  receive  its  grand 
est  application.  A  federation  was  formed  of  the  four 
colonies  then  in  existence  ;  Massachusetts,  Plymouth, 
Connecticut,  and  New  Haven.  The  motive  was  the  same 
which  has  given  birth  to  confederations  in  general,  mutual 
defence  against  hostile  force ;  the  hostile  force  in  this  case 
being  that  of  the  Dutch  who  pressed  from  the  south,  and 
that  of  the  French  Canadians  who  pressed  from  the  north, 
while  there  was  always  danger  from  the  Indians.  In  the 
instrument  of  federation  the  language  used  implied  the 
possession  by  the  contracting  parties  of  independent  and 
sovereign  power,  such  as  would  enable  them  to  make 
peace  and  war.  The  difficulties  of  the  system  were 
illustrated  by  the  jealousies  and  disputes  which  arose 
notwithstanding  the  simple  nature  in  this  case  of  the 
federal  functions  and  the  strong  inducement  to  unanimity 
afforded  by  common  peril.  Light  was  thrown,  too,  on  the 
conditions  requisite  for  federation,  which  seems  to  be  ap 
plicable  only  to  a  group  of  states,  nearly  equal  or  so 


i.  THE    COLONIES.  21 

balanced  as  to  preclude  the  domination  of  any  one  state 
and  the  jealousies  which  such  domination  or  the  appre 
hension  of  it  excites.  Massachusetts,  being  much  larger 
and  stronger  than  her  three  sisters,  and  naturally  claiming 
influence  in  proportion  to  her  contribution,  domineered, 
or  was  believed  by  her  partners  to  domineer,  and  instead 
of  harmonious  action  there  was  strife. 

The  belief  that  the  scriptures  contained  the  rule  of  civil 
as  well  as  that  of  spiritual  life,  coupled  with  the  belief 
that  the  Old  Testament  was  of  equal  authority  with  the 
New,  could  not  fail  to  sit  heavy  on  the  Puritans  of  New 
England,  as  well  as  those  of  the  mother  country.  Their 
legislation  was  tainted  with  Mosaism.  Blasphenry,  witch 
craft,  adultery,  smiting  or  cursing  parents,  were  treated 
as  capital  crimes,  though  we  have  no  record  of  an  inflic 
tion  of  the  death  penalty  for  blasphemy,  adultery,  or 
filial  rebellion.  For  death  as  the  punishment  in  the 
case  of  adultery  was  afterwards  substituted  a  milder 
penalty,  a  part  of  which  was  the  wearing  of  the  scarlet 
letter  A  as  a  mark  of  infamy.  Sabbath-breaking  was 
punished  with  extreme  severity.  It  is  the  inherent 
tendency  of  theocracy  to  deal  with  sins  as  crimes.  But 
in  the  framing  of  the  code,  with  the  spirit  of  Mosaism 
incarnate  in  Cotton  and  the  ministers,  a  part  was  taken 
by  the  spirit  of  law-reform,  embodied  in  Ward,  a  clergy 
man  who  in  England  had  been  bred  to  the  law.  The 
code  of  Massachusetts  and  those  of  other  New  England 
colonies  are  on  the  whole  a  great  improvement  on  those 
of  the  mother  country  in  humanity  and  civilization. 
Their  use  of  the  death  penalty  is  sparing  indeed  com 
pared  with  the  use  of  it  in  the  code  of  the  mother  country, 
where  at  last  there  were  a  hundred  and  sixty  capital 


22  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

offences.  Cruelty  to  animals  was  forbidden.  Though 
equality  did  not  yet  fully  reign,  there  was  enough  of  it 
to  prevent  aristocratic  prodigality  of  the  blood  of  the 
poor.  Imprisonment  for  debt  was  discarded.  The  en 
snaring  technicalities  of  the  pleading  system  were  relaxed. 

1641.  A  written  code  was  framed,  which  being  rational  and 
intelligible,  was  an  improvement  upon  the  chaotic  ped 
antry  of  English  jurisprudence,  while  the  great  under 
lying  principles  of  English  justice,  and  with  them  the 
English  right  of  trial  by  jury,  were  retained.  The  aristo 
cratic  right  of  primogeniture  in  succession  to  estates 
was  reduced  to  a  double  share.  Women  were  protected 
against  the  violence  of  their  husbands,  and  a  share  o:; 
the  husband's  goods  was  secured  to  the  widow.  Such 
reforms  Cromwell  would  probably  have  made  in  England 
had  he  been  able  to  overcome  the  interested  prejudices 
of  his  lawyers.  The  celebration  of  marriage,  which  the 
Puritan  deemed  no  sacrament,  was  transferred  from 
the  clergyman  to  the  magistrate.  Barbarous  punishments, 
such  as  flogging,  setting  in  the  stocks,  tongue-boring, 
and  ear-cropping,  were  still  in  vogue.  Civilization  had 
nowhere  advanced  beyond  them.  New  Haven  was  some- 

1638.  what  more  Mosaic  and  sterner  than  Boston.  It  had  been 
founded  by  men  for  whom  Boston  was  too  little  Puritan, 
and  who  were  called  the  Brahmins  of  the  sect.  Its  chief 
rulers  were  styled  "  The  Seven  Pillars,"  and  it  rejected 
jury  trial  as  unsanctioned  by  the  scriptures.  "  Never 
elsewhere,  I  believe,"  says  Dr.  Bacon,  "  has  the  world  seen 
magistrates  who  felt  more  deeply  that  they  were  God's 
ministers  executing  God's  justice."  God's  justice  must 
have  been  inquisitorial  if  it  extended  to  misbehaviour  on 
the  part  of  servants,  to  keeping  suspicious  company  on 


i.  THE    COLONIES.  23 

the  Lord's  day,  and  to  kissing.  But  it  is  not  to  be  sup 
posed  that  the  scriptural  ideal  which  these  pious  people 
embodied  in  their  enactments  could  be  literally  carried 
into  effect.  The  Blue  Laws  of  Connecticut  are  at  all 
events  a  fable.  When  no  government  was  free  from 
fallacy  the  fruits  must  be  judged  by  comparison.  Under 
the  discipline  of  Puritan  theocracy,  combined  with  the 
training  of  industry  and  of  bold  seafaring,  the  foundations 
of  a  strong  character  were  laid. 

The  Puritan  colonists  had  begun  with  the  common 
ownership  of  land.  They  soon  found  that  common  owner 
ship  meant  common  neglect  and  hunger,  as  had  the  col 
onists  of  Virginia  till  a  leader  by  sheer  force  compelled 
them  to  work.  They  then  divided  the  land  into  lots, 
after  •  which  industry  became  strenuous,  and  there  was 
food  enough.  Some  common  land,  however,  was  retained, 
and  the  lovely  public  gardens  of  Boston  are  a  monument 
of  the  primitive  system.  An  attempt  was  made  to  regu 
late  the  rate  of  wages,  and  when  the  wage-earners  com 
plained  of  their  reduced  power  of  purchasing,  an  attempt 
was  made  to  regulate  prices  also.  Even  under  a  theo 
cracy  both  experiments  failed.  Thus  these  pioneers  of 
trade  and  industry  in  their  day  "  relegated  political 
economy  to  Saturn,"  and  found  that  it  returned.  A 
better  measure  was  the  enactment  that  no  house  should 
be  built  at  more  than  a  certain  distance  from  a  place  of 
worship.  If  the  primary  object  of  this  law  was  ecclesias 
tical  it  brought  with  it  the  economical  and  moral  advan 
tages  of  close  settlement,  it  favoured  the  growth  of 
towns,  and,  therefore,  of  social  and  political  life. 

Life  was    of   course    austere.     Much   in   which   Merry 
England  delighted  and  might  well  delight  Avas  forbidden. 


24  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAI. 

There  were  no  May-poles  nor  Christmas  pies.  There  was 
no  theatre ;  the  acting  even  of  "  Comus  "  would  not  hav  3 
been  endured.  There  were  no  thinkings  of  healths,  and 
of  course  no  cards  nor  dice.  On  the  other  hand  there  was 
no  bear-baiting,  no  cock-fighting,  no  cocking  on  Shrove 
Tuesday,  no  beastly  drinking  bout,  no  beating  of  watch 
men,  no  outrage  of  aristocratic  Mohocks.  There  wero 
social  meetings  for  the  young,  such  as  raising  bees  and 
sewing  bees.  There  seems  even  to  have  been  dancing. 
Neither  in  respect  of  food  nor  in  respect  of  drink  was 
Puritanism  ascetic.  Its  preachers  had  their  casks  of  rum 
or  brandy.  Thanksgiving  Day,  its  chief  festival  in  tin 
new  world,  was  probably  kept  with  as  good  cheer  as  tin 
prelatical  Christmas.  Frugality  as  well  as  religious  prin 
ciple  would  check  excess  of  all  kinds  even  when  riches 
had  increased,  else  denial  of  amusement  is  apt  to  lead  to 
greater  indulgence  in  the  pleasures  of  the  table.  Gaiety 
of  apparel  was  discouraged,  but  on  the  Sabbath  all  ap 
peared  in  their  best  clothes.  Military  drill  and  muster, 
which  the  neighbourhood  of  the  Indians  and  the  hostile 
Dutch  and  French  always  enforced  and  to  which  all  citi 
zens  were  bound,  besides  keeping  up  manly  vigour,  would 
be  a  thread  of  variety  and  picturesqueness  in  the  sad- 
coloured  web  of  existence.  Still,  New  England  life  must 
have  been  austere.  Nor  can  the  danger  of  moral  reaction 
against  over-strictness  and  formality  have  been  absent. 
The  religious  exercises  were  such  as  would  far  surpass  our 
powers  of  pious  endurance.  Could  any  but  the  liveliest 
faith  have  drunk  in  with  delight  the  interminable  sermon 
of  a  Calvinistic  pastor  in  an  unwarmed  meeting  house 
with  temperature  below  zero?  However,  the  faith  of 
these  men  was  the  liveliest,  and  they  did  fully  believe 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  25 

that  the  world  in  which  they  practised  this  self-denial  and 
patiently  listened  to  these  discourses  was  the  threshold  of 
a  home  prepared  for  the  saints  in  heaven.  * 

New  England  was  not  free  from  the  stain  of  slavery. 
The  law  of  Massachusetts  said,  "  There  shall  be  no  bond- 
slavery,  villainage,  or  captivity  amongst  us  unless  it  be 
lawful  captives  taken  in  just  wars  and  such  strangers  as 
willingly  sell  themselves  or  are  sold  to  us."  This  licences 
slavery  and  the  slave  trade,  though  the  provision  which 
grants  to  the  slave  "  all  the  liberties  and  Christian  usages 
which  the  law  of  God  established  in  Israel,"  the  Hebrew 
code  having  been  merciful  for  its  day,  would  render  slavery 
in  New  England  comparatively  mild.  Slavery  was  sanc 
tioned  by  the  Bible  ;  that  was  enough  for  the  Puritan, 
who  knew  nothing  about  evolution  or  the  education  of 
the  human  race,  and  whose  Christianity  had  not  recog 
nized  the  equal  humanity  of  the  heathen.  Ships  from  New 
England  took  part  in  the  slave  trade,  though  the  members 
of  the  religious  commonwealth  who  made  a  murderous 
raid  upon  an  African  village  on  the  Sabbath  were  brought 
to  justice  for  their  double  crime.  Fortunately  for  New 
England,  she  had  no  industry  like  that  of  cotton,  tobacco, 
or  rice,  in  which  slave  labour  could  be  profitably  employed. 
Slaves  do  not  make  good  husbandmen  or  seamen. 

Relations  with  the  aborigines  are  a  sad  page  in  the 
history  of  colonies.  At  the  time  of  American  secession 
the  charge  was  revived  against  the  New  England  Puri 
tans  of  exterminating  the  natives  on  a  hideous  scale. 
The  number  of  savages  who  wandered  over  those  ex 
panses  seems  to  have  been  really  small,  nor  were  they 
exterminated,  though  they  were  decimated  by  war  and, 
perhaps  still  more,  by  the  contraction  of  their  hunting- 


26  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

grounds  and  their  adoption  of  white  vices.  Indian  tribes 
were  always  carrying  on  wars  of  extermination  against; 
each  other.  In  their  conduct  towards  the  savages  with 
whom  they  came  into  contact,  the  Puritans  may  at  leas'; 
challenge  comparison  with  the  conduct  of  the  Spanish 
Catholics  towards  the  far  more  civilized  people  of  tlio 
same  race  who  were  found  in  Mexico  and  South  America. 
In  their  first  advances  the  new-comers  showed  a  wish 
for  peace  and  justice.  For  the  seed  corn  which  they  had 
taken  from  an  Indian  store  they  tendered  fair  compen 
sation.  Compensation  of  some  sort  was  made  for  the 
lands  taken  from  the  natives,  though  while  on  the  ono 
hand  mere  roaming  over  a  vast  region  could  hardly  nrnko 
the  Indian  hunter  its  proprietor,  on  the  other  nothing 
could  compensate  the  wandering  hunter  for  the  loss 
of  the  wilderness  and  the  game.  Nor  did  the  settlers 
ever  cease  to  recognize  the  Indian  as  a  man  having  a 
right  to  justice  against  the  Englishman.  The  missionary 
efforts  of  Eliot  were  fully  as  noble  as  those  of  Las  Casas 
or  the  Jesuits,  while  they  were  not,  like  those  of  the 
Jesuits,  tainted  with  an  equivocal  ambition.  He  could 
number  several  thousand  Indian  converts,  some  hundreds 
of  whom  had  learned  to  read  a  language  reduced  by 
him  to  writing.  His  Indian  Bible  was  an  almost  super- 
1661.  human  monument  of  philanthropic  labour.  He  strove 
to  combine  civilization  with  conversion,  and  aimed  at 
making  his  converts  men,  not  sheep.  But  the  Red  Indian 
in  reality,  though  not  in  the  romance  of  Fenimore  Cooper, 
was  of  all  savages  the  most  irreclaimable.  Wild  virtues, 
notably  fortitude,  he  had,  as  well  as  keenness  of  sense 
and  power  of  endurance,  but  his  life  was  full  of  slaughter 
and  rapine,  his  cruelty  was  fiendish.  In  the  Iroquois 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  27 

the  devilish  lust  of  blood  and  torture  was  so  ingrained, 
and  was  combined  with  so  much  cunning  and  perfidy, 
that  it  was  scarcely  possible  to  deal  with  him  otherwise 
than  as  with  the  most  dangerous  and  untameable  of 
wild  beasts.  On  the  border  no  one  could  sleep  secure 
against  the  sudden  onslaught  of  the  savage  with  the 
tomahawk  and  the  firebrand.  While  the  congregation 
was  in  church,  armed  men  stood  guard  at  the  door. 
The  Puritan  also  had  his  cruel  moods,  and  his  notions 
about  smiting  the  Canaanite  in  New  England  as  well  as 
in  Ireland.  He  was  in  one  of  those  moods  when,  in  the  1G37. 
Pequod  war,  he  destroyed,  in  one  holocaust,  four  hundred 
Indians,  men,  women,  and  children.  Yet  more  terrible  1674-6. 
was  the  war  in  later  days  against  the  Indian  chief  called 
King  Philip,  who,  as  the  colonists  believed,  had  been 
forming  a  league  to  drive  them  out  of  the  land.  This 
war  lasted  for  two  years,  during  which  nearly  two-thirds 
of  the  eighty  or  ninety  towns  of  Massachusetts  were 
raided  by  the  savages,  ten  or  twelve  were  totally  de 
stroyed,  and  ten  per  cent  of  the  men  of  military  age 
were  killed  in  fight  or  carried  off  to  be  tortured  to  death. 
Piteous  is  the  tale  of  a  matron  who  was  led  into  captivity 
with  her  wounded  child.  A  desperate  heroism  was  bred 
by  these  struggles  in  the  women  as  well  as  in  the  men. 
Hannah  Dustin,  being  carried  off  with  her  nurse  and 
a  white  boy,  got  the  white  boy  to  join  her,  rose  in  the 
night,  killed  the  Indians  with  their  own  tomahawks, 
scalped  them,  and  made  her  way  back  a  hundred  miles 
to  her  home.  No  wonder  if  disturbed  fancy  added  its 
terrors  to  those  of  reality,  if  Indian  bows  were  seen  in 
the  sky  and  scalps  in  the  moon,  if  the  aurora  borealis 
was  taken  for  a  blood-red  portent  of  coming  war.  No 


28  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAI. 

wonder  if  the  Puritan  conscience  was  alarmed  and  looked 
for  causes  of  divine  wrath  in  curled  hair  and  ribbons, 
naked  breasts  and  arms,  swearing  and  tippling,  suspicious 
ridings  of  youths  and  maidens  to  town  under  pretence  of 
attending  lectures,  hurrying  away  from  meeting  before 
blessing  asked,  and  toleration  of  Quakers.  It  is  marvel 
lous,  and  creditable  to  the  Puritan  religion  that  tha 
humanity  of  the  colonists  did  not  altogether  give  way. 
A  solution  of  the  fatal  problem  by  a  mixture  of  the 
races  was  out  of  the  question.  The  marriage  of  Pocr,- 
hontas  with  the  Virginian  Rolfe,  hailed  as  auspicious 
at  the  time,  had  no  sequel.  Few  were  the  inter-marriages 
between  the  whites  and  the  Indians,  though  Indian  blood, 
instead  of  being  deemed,  like  negro  blood,  a  disgrace,  has 
been  rather  a  subject  of  pride  among  Americans,  an  I 
one  of  the  most  eminent  of  Virginian  politicians  was  fond 
of  reminding  his  hearers  that  it  ran  in  his  veins.  The 
higher  the  race  is,  the  less  does  it  mingle  with  lower 
races.  The  Anglo-Saxon  is  to  lower  races  a  ruler,  and  in 
dealing  with  them  his  exclusiveness  is  at  once  his  strength 
and  his  weakness. 

Massachusetts  always  professed  allegiance  to  the  British 
Crown,  which,  and  not  Parliament,  it  must  be  remem 
bered,  in  those  days  was,  or  was  taken  to  be,  the  real 
government ;  in  other  respects  she  always  bore  herself  as 
an  independent  and  almost  sovereign  commonwealth. 
She  made  war  and  peace ;  she  formed  a  confederation ; 
she  taxed  herself,  paying  no  tribute  of  any  kind ;  she 
coined  her  own  money,  the  pine-tree  shilling ;  she  dealt 
freely  with  her  own  constitution ;  she  framed  her  o\vn 
code  of  laws,  including  the  law  of  capital  punishment, 
though  as  a  general  basis  the  English  common  law  pro- 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  29 

vailed.  She  framed  her  own  treason  law,  enacting  that 
if  any  man  should  rebel  or  conspire  against  the  common 
wealth,  or  should  attempt  the  alteration  or  subversion  of 
her  fundamental  government,  he  should  suffer  death. 
This  practically  puts  the  commonwealth  in  the  place  of 
the  king;  had  such  been  the  treason  law  of  England 
there  would  have  been  no  difficulty  in  framing  the  in 
dictment  of  Strafford.  When  there  was  any  attempt  on 
the  part  of  the  home  government  actually  to  enforce  the 
obedience  of  the  colony,  the  colonists  met  it  with  sage 
diplomacy,  fortified  by  fasting  and  prayer.  The  distance 
from  the  imperial  country  favoured  the  tactics  of  delay. 
It  furnished  also  a  conclusive  plea  for  military  indepen 
dence.  "If  we  in  America,"  said  Winthrop,  "should 
forbear  to  unite  for  offence  and  defence  against  a  com 
mon  enemy  till  we  have  leave  from  England,  our  throats 
might  be  all  cut  before  the  messenger  could  be  half  seas 
through."  The  smaller  Puritan  colonies  in  Rhode 
Island,  Connecticut,  and  New  Hampshire,  pervaded  by 
the  same  spirit  as  Massachusetts,  like  her  were  bent  on 
enjoying  practical  independence.  They,  especially  Rhode 
Island,  had  less  difficulty  in  obtaining  a  large  measure  of 
it,  since  the  Crown  was  inclined  to  make  them  its  allies 
against  Massachusetts,  whose  ambitious  aspirations  and 
hostility  to  Episcopalianism,  the  royal  religion,  combined 
with  its  power,  gave  special  umbrage  to  the  Crown. 
There  is  always  the  same  strain  upon  the  bond,  false 
from  the  beginning,  between  the  dependent  colony  and 
the  mother  country ;  and  the  stronger  and  more  self 
reliant  is  the  colony,  the  greater  is  the  strain. 

As  Protestants  militant  the  New  Englanders  were  bound 
up  with  the  fortunes  of  their  cause  in   Europe.     With 


30  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

eager  eyes  they  had  watched  the  victorious  career  of 
Gustavus  Adolphus.  With  eyes  still  more  eager  would, 
they  watch  the  struggle  in  their  mother  country  between 
high  church  despotism  and  protestant  liberty.  They  tri 
umphed  in  the  victory  of  the  Parliament.  Yet  they  were 
careful  in  their  relations  with  the  Parliament  not  to  com 
promise  their  own  independence.  Presbyterianism,  domi 
nant  for  the  time  in  England,  and  believing  as  firmly  as 
did  Popery  or  Anglicanism  in  its  divine  origin,  would  fain 
have  extended  its  dominion  to  the  colonies.  A  synod  o<: 
the  Massachusetts  churches  was  held  and  the  Westminster 
Confession  was  approved,  but  the  Congregational  theocracy 
of  New  England  underwent  no  change.  The  policy  of  the 
Protector  towards  the  colonists  was  large-minded  and 
liberal.  He  offered  them,  instead  of  their  niggard  soil 
and  chilly  climate,  the  rich  and  sunny  Jamaica.  A: 
another  time  he  proposed  to  transplant  them  to  Ireland. 
Happily  they  declined  both  offers.  In  Jamaica  they  would 
have  sunk  into  slave-owners ;  in  Ireland  they  would  have; 
had  to  make  room  for  themselves  by  smiting  the  Canaan- 
ites  of  that  land  with  the  edge  of  the  sword.  New  Eng 
land  accepted  the  Restoration,  but  did  not  welcome  it. 
1661.  After  more  than  a  year's  delay  Charles  II  was  proclaimed 
at  Boston,  but  to  drink  his  health  was  not  allowed;  his 
Majesty  himself  having  strictly  forbidden  it,  as  the  rulers, 
by  a  pious  fiction,  declared.  The  colony  gave  an  asylum 
to  the  regicides  Whalley,  Goffe,  and  Dixwell,  who,  hunted 
by  royal  emissaries,  were  sheltered  by  popular  sympathy. 
A  cave  near  New  Haven  is  still  shown  as  the  refuse  of 

o 

Goffe  and  Whalley.  Tradition  makes  Goffe  suddenly 
appear  on  the  scene  to  rally  a  party  of  colonists  who  were 
hard  pressed  in  fight  by  Indians,  and  who  took  the  mys- 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  31 

terious  stranger  for  an  angel  sent  to  their  rescue.  Con 
necticut  and  Rhode  Island  were,  as  usual,  more  prompt  in 
their  submission  than  Massachusetts,  and  the  royal  coun 
tenance  beamed  on  them  accordingly. 

By  this  time,  however,  a  change  had  come  over  the 
spirit  of  Massachusetts  herself.  Trade  had  grown  active, 
wealth  had  increased,  and  there  had  arisen  a  class  more 
commercial  than  religious,  which  lusted  after  the  flesh- 
pots,  material  and  social,  of  the  Royal  and  Anglican 
Egypt.  Against  austerity,  often  tainted  with  conceit  and 
sometimes  with  hypocrisy,  a  reaction  was  sure  to  take 
place  like  that  of  the  Restoration  against  the  reign  of  the 
saints  in  England.  The  root  of  colonial  Puritanism  in  the 
mother  country  was  dead,  for  Puritanism  of  the  genuine 
kind  ended  there  with  the  Restoration,  and  nothing 
remained  but  the  far  less  lofty  and  energetic  spirit  of 
political  non-conformity.  Trade  had  brought  a  mixed 
population.  The  theocratic  burghers  were  a  minority, 
according  to  the  excluded  a  mere  fraction  of  the  commu 
nity,  and  their  political  privileges  had  become  an  object 
of  just  jealousy  and  hatred  to  those  who  were  excluded 
from  the  pale.  Among  the  new-comers  were  members  of 
the  Anglican  Church  who  demanded  liberty  for  their  re 
ligion.  It  must  not  be  left  out  of  sight  that  in  some  sort 
religious  liberty  in  Massachusetts  looked  to  the  English 
monarchy  for  protection  and  thus  justified  the  interference 
of  the  home  government.  Ungodly  wealth  looked  wist 
fully  at  the  pomp  and  trappings  of  British  monarchy 
and  aristocracy.  Political  and  religious  malcontents  alike, 
Royalists,  Episcopalians,  Baptists,  and  Quakers,  turned 
their  eyes  to  Westminster  and  there  urged  their  com 
plaints  and  carried  on  their  intrigues.  The  germs  of 


32  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

the  Tory  and  Whig  parties  of  the  Revolution  had  been 
formed.  This  invited  the  despotic  aggression  of  the  later 
Stuarts.  The  colonial  government  seems  to  have  felt  its 
weakness,  since  upon  the  arrival  of  the  news  of  the  Res 
toration  and  of  the  complaints  lodged  against  it  in  Eng 
land  it  sent  to  Charles  II  an  apologetical  address  in  which 
the  colony  was  designated  as  "  the  King's  poor  Mephi- 
bosheth,  by  reason  of  lameness  in  respect  of  distance  not 
until  now  appearing  in  his  presence,  kneeling  Avith  the 
rest  of  his  subjects  before  His  Majesty  as  her  restored 
King."  The  pine-tree  shilling  being  an  offensive  token 
of  monetary  independence,  the  pine  was  ingenuously 
passed  off  as  the  royal  oak.  But  the  storm  was  not 
averted  by  loyal  language  or  by  a  condemnation  of  Eliot':? 
republican  treatise  on  the  "  Commonwealth,"  which,  in 
some  degree,  reminds  us  of  the  tributes  paid  to  monarchy 
in  the  condemnation  of  republican  writings  by  loyal 
universities  in  England.  The  agents  of  Massachusetts 
brought  back  with  them  a  royal  missive  demanding  the 
repeal  of  all  laws  inconsistent  with  the  King's  authority, 
the  administration  of  justice  in  his  name,  the  renewal  of 
the  oath  of  allegiance,  the  substitution  of  property  quali 
fications  for  church  membership  as  the  title  to  the  fran 
chise  and  to  office,  and  the  admission  of  all  people  of 
honest  views  to  baptism  and  the  Lord's  Supper;  the  two 
last  articles  importing  nothing  less  than  the  abolition  of 
theocracy.  Thus  in  the  colony,  as  in  the  mother  country, 
the  Romanizing  Stuart  figured  in  a  sinister  way  as  the 
patron  of  toleration.  The  Quakers,  however,  though  the 
King  at  first  gave  ear  to  their  complaints,  obtained  little 
relief  in  the  end.  They  filled  the  Stuarts'  own  prisons. 
Permission  was  given  to  make  a  sharp  law  against  them. 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  33 

and  the  sharp  law  was  executed  on  two  young  married 
Quakeresses,  who  walked  naked  through  the  streets  in 
imitation  of  the  prophet  Ezekiel,  as  a  sign  of  the  naked 
ness  of  the  land.  Royalty  had  in  the  colony  its  party 
arrayed  against  the  zealous  defenders  of  the  theocracy, 
and  headed  by  Joseph  Dudley,  son  of  the  stern  Puritan 
Governor,  but  himself  a  shifty  politician,  the  counterpart 
of  the  Lauderdales  and  Shaftesburys  of  the  mother  coun 
try.  Besides  the  threatened  change  in  her  constitution, 
Massachusetts  was  menaced  with  a  blow  to  her  terri 
torial  ambition  by  a  decision  adverse  to  her  aggrandize 
ment  in  Maine,  the  proprietary  colony  of  Sir  Ferdinando 
Gorges  which  she  had  been  striving  to  appropriate.  Relief 
from  pressure  was  probably  afforded  to  the  colony  by  the 
reaction  against  the  court  in  England  consequent  on  the 
Popish  Plot,  which  gave  birth  to  the  Exclusion  Bill. 
But  when  the  court  had  triumphed  over  the  opposition, 
and  was  sending  the  Whig  leaders  to  the  scaffold,  prayers, 
money — the  effect  of  which  upon  the  courtiers  seems 
now  to  have  been  tried  —  and  partial  submission  proved 
alike  unavailing  any  longer  to  avert  the  impending  blow. 
A  quo  warranto  went  forth ;  the  charter  of  Massachusetts, 
like  the  charters  of  the  English  municipalities,  was  an 
nulled  ;  and,  by  a  colourable  process  of  law,  for  the  later 
Stuarts  did  everything  in  form  of  law,  the  commonwealth 
was  reduced  to  a  dependency  under  the  arbitrary  power  of 
the  Crown,  which  by  the  same  act  became  again  lord  of  all 
the  land,  and  had  the  title  of  every  freeholder  legally  at  its 
mercy.  Under  James  II  the  colony  narrowly  escaped 
having  the  sanguinary  Kirke  as  its  Governor.  Sir  Ed 
mund  Andros  came  out  in  that  capacity  instinct  with 
the  spirit  of  his  master.  He  appeared  as  Governorof  the 


34  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAI  . 

whole  of  New  England,  and  apparently  as  destined  Gov 
ernor-General  of  all  the  colonies.  Under  him  as  president  of 
the  council  was  Joseph  Dudley,  playing  Sundeiiand  to  the 
viceroy  of  James  II.  Andros,  like  his  master,  assume  1 
the  despot.  He  levied  arbitrary  taxes,  he  compelled 
freeholders  to  purchase  new  patents  for  their  lands,  an  I 
if  they  complained  he  told  them,  with  the  insolence  of 
another  Jeffreys,  by  the  mouth  of  his  deputy,  that  they 
had  nothing  left  them  except  the  privilege  of  not  being 
sold  as  slaves.  He  killed  liberty  in  its  source  by  putting 
an  end  to  the  freedom  of  the  press  and  making  the  obso- 
quious  Dudley  censor.  He  forcibly  introduced  the  Church 
of  England,  seized  a  meeting  house  for  its  prelatical 
services,  and  caused  the  Anglican  surplice  to  be  dis 
played  before  the  eyes  of  the  scandalized  Puritans.  l;e 
took  away  the  celebration  of  marriages  from  the  magis 
trates  and  confined  it  to  Episcopal  clergymen,  of  who  n 
there  was  only  one  in  the  colony.  To  bring  Connecticut 
under  his  despotism  he  went  to  Hartford  and  demands  d 
the  surrender  of  the  charter,  but  the  discussion  lasting 
into  the  night  the  lights  were  suddenly  put  out  and  in 
the  darkness  the  precious  document  disappeared  and  was 
hidden  in  an  oak  which  became  sacred  as  the  Charter 
Oak.  It  seems  wonderful  that  there  was  no  serious 
resistance  except  in  New  Hampshire,  where  the  people 
rose  against  arbitrary  taxation,  that  capital  grievance 
which,  even  under  the  Tudors,  English  blood  would  not 
endure.  But  the  party  of  liberty  in  England  was  pros 
trate  ;  the  trade  of  the  colony  and  its  seaboard  towns 
lay  at  the  mercy  of  the  royal  fleet;  nor  was  the  king 
without  partisans  where,  as  at  home,  he  could  play,  pend 
ing  the  re-installation  of  his  own  persecuting  religion, 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  35 

the  part  of  a  protector  against  persecution.  He  could 
look  also  for  some  support  to  Connecticut  and  Rhode 
Island,  always  jealous  of  their  too  powerful  sister ;  while 
Rhode  Island  was  mortally  opposed  to  a  theocracy  such 
as  still  struggled  for  life  in  Massachusetts.  One  day, 
however,  there  sailed  into  Boston  harbour  an  English 
ship  bringing  the  glad  tidings  of  the  Revolution  and  the 
order  to  proclaim  William  and  Mary.  That  order  was 
joyfully  obeyed.  Andros  fell  like  Jeffreys,  and  like 
Jeffreys  had  a  narrow  escape  from  popular  vengeance. 

William  III  had  saved  the  liberties  of  Europe  from 
Louis  XIV.  But  his  own  trade  was  to  be  a  king,  and  he 
soon  had  a  Tory  Parliament.  After  some  deliberation  he  1692. 
restored  the  charter  of  Massachusetts,  not,  however,  with 
out  serious  changes.  The  governor  was  thenceforth  to  be 
appointed  by  the  king,  not  elected  by  the  people.  Tol 
eration  was  secured  to  all  religions  except  the  Roman 
Catholic.  The  qualification  for  the  franchise  was  to  be 
property,  not  church  membership.  This  was  the  legal  end 
of  the  theocracy,  though  practically  the  theocratic  influ 
ence  still  held  its  ground  in  the  government,  and  moulded 
laws  as  well  as  manners,  while  the  Congregational  minis 
try  remained  on  something  like  the  footing  of  an  estab 
lished  clergy  supported  by  general  contributions.  The 
press,  without  formal  emancipation,  slipped  its  neck  out 
of  the  yoke  of  the  censorship  much  as  it  did  in  England. 
That  the  counter  revolution  was  not  violent  in  the  colony 
any  more  than  in  the  mother  country  is  shown  by  the  re 
tention  of  Dudley,  the  friend  of  prerogative,  in  office. 

Other  foes  of  theocracy,  however,  more  powerful  than 
the  legal  enactments  of  the  English  king  and  parliament, 
were  now  at  work.  The  system  had  served  as  the  mould 


36  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAI-. 

of  New  England  character  and  institutions.  The  Puritan 
ism  which  was  its  informing  spirit  was  now  rapidly  dyiir* 
in  the  colony,  as  after  the  fall  of  the  Commonwealth  it 
had  died  in  the  mother  country.  Surviving  forms  cf 
enthusiasm  had  become  hollow;  people  could  no  longer 
be  brought  to  recount  their  spiritual  experiences  to  their 
fellows.  To  meet  the  wants  of  citizens  whose  parents  had 
contrived,  against  the  strict  rule,  to  have  them  baptized, 
but  who  did  not  inherit  the  zeal  essential  to  a  full  partici 
pation  in  church  ordinances  and  life,  "  half-way  com 
munion  "  was,  to  the  dismay  of  the  saints,  introduced. 
Of  the  saints  themselves  the  more  politic,  including  Cot 
ton  Mather,  had  at  last  to  consent  to  the  compromis3. 
Trade  brought  immigrants  of  different  religions  who  could 
not,  like  Roger  Williams  and  the  Quakers,  be  cast  out. 
Wealth  inclined  to  the  doctrinal  laxity  and  practical  in 
dulgence  as  well  as  to  the  liturgical  pomp  and  aristocratic 
associations  of  the  Episcopal  church.  The  Baptists  set  up 
an  altar  against  God's  altar  and  would  not  allow  it  to  be 
pulled  down.  Close  at  hand  was  Rhode  Island,  always 
proclaiming  liberty  of  conscience  ;  and  if  her  principle 
was  somewhat  discredited  by  political  disorder,  its  enun 
ciation  could  not  fail  to  tell  on  free  spirits.  In  Boston  at 
this  time,  according  to  Dunton,  a  roving  bookseller,  there 
were  thirteen  bookstores,  a  formidable  mine  under  the 
foundations  of  the  theocratic  edifice.  The  ministers  were 
not  field  preachers  ;  they  received  a  learned  education  at 
Harvard,  and  with  learning  the  spirit  of  inquiry  found  its 
way.  Latitudinarianism  began  to  creep  in.  Presently 
Unitarianism  raised  its  head,  and  in  time  possessed  itself 
of  the  government  of  the  University.  Even  Rationalism, 
or  a  tendency  which  the  Calvinist  would  deem  rational- 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  37 

istic,  to  limit  the  domain  of  the  supernatural,  was  gaining 
ground.  Perception  of  the  invisible  world  grew  faint  as 
interest  in  the  visible  world  grew  strong.  Not  that  Cal 
vinism  died  out ;  many  years  afterwards  it  shot  up  with 
almost  terrific  force  and  under  its  grimmest  aspect  in  the 
predestinarian  writings  of  Jonathan  Edwards  and  in  the 
revival  of  which  he  was  the  chief. 

It  was,  perhaps,  fear  that  the  belief  in  the  supernatural, 
and  notably  in  the  supernatural  agency  of  the  Evil  One, 
was  dying  out  which  led  Cotton  Mather,  a  minister  of 
prodigious  though  ill-digested  learning  and  at  the  same 
time  full  of  spiritual  self-conceit,  to  countenance  the  hor 
rible  delusion  of  Salem  witchcraft  which  has  left  a  dark 
stain  on  New  England  history,  as  readers  of  Hawthorne's 
"  House  of  the  Seven  Gables  "  know.  Belief  in  witchcraft 
was  an  hallucination  common  to  all  the  churches,  and  in 
all  of  them  it  had  led  to  judicial  murder.  In  the  Church 
of  Rome  it  had  led  to  judicial  murder  on  the  largest  scale. 
No  one,  not  even  Blackstone,  who  believed  that  the  Pen 
tateuch  was  literally  inspired,  could  deny  the  reality  of 
the  crime.  Salem,  the  chief  scene  of  these  horrors,  was  1692. 
the  original  seat  of  the  Massachusetts  Bay  colony,  and 
over  its  quiet  streets  the  spirit  of  primitive  Puritanism 
still  broods.  An  epidemic  of  disease  had  predisposed  the 
minds  of  the  people  to  an  epidemic  of  superstition.  Nine 
teen  persons  were  put  to  death  on  charges  as  fantastic  as 
a  lunatic's  visions,  and  chiefly  on  the  evidence  of  wicked 
or  perverted  children  whose  cunning  and  persistency  in 
their  fabrications  are  not  the  least  remarkable  part  of  the 
episode.  One  man  who  was  eighty  years  of  age  refusing 
to  plead,  that  he  might  save  the  inheritance  of  his  chil 
dren,  suffered  the  penalty  of  the  peine  forte  et  dure,  being 


38  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

pressed  to  death  with  heavy  weights.  Even  to  Harvard 
College  the  tide  of  delusion  seems  to  have  extended. 
Then  came  a  revulsion  of  public  feeling.  The  demeanour 
of  some  of  the  victims  touched  the  feelings  and  shook  the 
convictions  of  the  people.  Of  the  authors  of  the  persecu 
tion,  some  repented.  Judge  Sewall  stood  up  in  church 
while  his  declaration  of  contrition  Avas  read.  Cotton 
Mather  remained  impenitent  and  probably  was  only  con 
firmed  in  his  obduracy  by  the  arguments  of  Calef,  an 
unlearned  but  vigorous  theologian  who  attacked  the 
whole  belief.  Cotton  Mather  afterwards  partly  redeemed 
himself  by  countenancing,  at  a  great  sacrifice  of  his  pop 
ularity  and  at  some  risk  of  his  life,  the  introduction  o.'' 
inoculation,  which  excited  the  ignorant  fury  of  the  mob. 
Even  in  him  learning  begot  something  of  liberality. 
Judge  Sewall  also  redeemed  himself  by  taking  up  his 
parable  against  slavery. 

Godliness,  even  the  strictest  Puritan  godliness,  had 
not  interfered  with  material  progress.  Through  the  tem 
perance,  industry,  and  frugality  which  it  bred,  the  other 
things  were  added  to  it.  The  Canaan  of  the  Puritan 
exiles  was  not  a  land  flowing  with  milk  and  honey. 
Though  the  Virginian  exaggerated  who  said  that  in  New 
England  you  had  to  put  in  a  herring  head  with  every 
stalk  of  corn  to  make  it  grow,  much  of  the  soil  was 
niggard.  The  American  farmer  is  now  deserting  it  for 
the  fertile  expanses  of  the  West.  The  climate,  too,  was 
rigorous.  That  land  may  almost  rank  with  the  marshes 
of  Holland  and  the  lagoons  of  Venice  as  a  stern  nurse 
of  the  industrial  virtues.  Yet  New  England  raised 
enough  to  supply  with  farm  products  not  only  herself 
but  the  West  Indies.  There  was  ship  timber  of  the  bestT 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  39 

such  as  furnished  the  finest  masts  for  the  "  tall  amirals  " 
of  the  royal  fleet.  There  were  abundant  fisheries  both 
of  cod  and  whale.  All  these  advantages  the  New  Eng- 
landers  improved  to  the  utmost.  They  supplied  England 
with  timber  and  marine  stores,  grew  rich  and,  at  the 
same  time,  became  hardy  and  adventurous  seamen.  Pop 
ulation  increased.  Signs  of  opulence  appeared.  Houses 
with  seven  gables  were  built.  An  austere  richness  marked 
furniture  and  apparel.  Highways  were  improved.  Snug 
little  inns  were  opened.  The  printing  press  was  active, 
though  chiefly  in  the  theological  line.  There  was  as 
yet  hardly  a  legal  profession.  The  people  had  hitherto 
been  judged  not  by  men  learned  in  the  laws,  but  by  the 
magistrate,  as  they  had  been  in  Israel.  That  there  were 
physicians  we  know  from  an  ordinance  against  quackery, 
though  regular  medicine  was  little  better  than  regular 
quackery  in  those  days. 


Meantime,  far  to  the  South  and  for  some  time  separated 
from  New  England  by  a  Dutch  plantation,  in  a  land  and 
an  air  physically  more  genial,  morally  less  happy,  another 
group  of  communities  had  been  growing  up.  These  were 
colonies  of  the  same  mother  country  as  New  England, 
but  widely  different  from  her  in  religious,  social,  and 
political  character,  destined  presently  to  be  joined  to  her 
in  an  ill-starred  union,  then  to  come  to  an  inevitable  rup 
ture  with  the  confederation  of  which  she  was  the  soul, 
and  after  a  desperate  struggle  to  be  subjugated  and 
re-annexed.  New  England  was  the  leading  shoot,  the 
moulding  force,  the  prevailing  spirit;  but  Virginia,  the 
queen  of  the  southern  group,  was  the  elder  colony. 


40  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

1585-7.  Virginia,  as  we  have  seen,  had  been  saved  when  on  the 
point  of  extinction  by  John  Smith,  a  true  Elizabethan 
hero  and  not  the  least  bright  star  of  the  constellation, 
though,  like  Raleigh  and  the  rest,  he  was  probably  not 
of  the  regular  type  of  virtue,  nor  free  from  a  boastfulness 
which  scorned  the  limits  of  fact.  This  man  knew  what 
a  colony  was  and  how  it  differed  from  a  gold-hunt. 
"Who,"  he  asked,  "can  desire  more  content  that  hath 
small  means,  or  but  only  his  merits  to  advance  his  for 
tunes,  than  to  tread  and  plant  that  ground  he  hath 
purchased  by  the  hazard  of  his  life  ?  If  he  have  but  the 
taste  of  virtue  and  magnanimity,  what  to  such  a  mind 
can  be  more  pleasant  than  planting  and  building  a  founda 
tion  for  his  posterity,  got  from  the  rude  earth  by  God's 
blessing  and  his  own  industry  without  prejudice  to  any  ?  " 
Smith  departed  under  a  cloud  of  sorrow,  but  he  had 
triumphed.  The  Virginia  Company  sent  out  supplies 
and  re-inforcements,  above  all  a  cargo  of  maids  as  wives 
for  the  settlers,  and  the  colony  struggled  into  permanent 
1610.  existence.  Then  came  Lord  Delaware  as  governor  with 
a  state  rather  beyond  the  needs  and  means  of  the  colony, 
whereat  rough  settlers  grumbled,  but  with  power  and 
will  to  put  down  misrule.  He  struck  the  key  note  for 
Virginian  society  by  repairing  the  dilapidated  church 
at  Jamestown,  giving  it  pews  and  a  chancel  of  cedar,  a 
communion  table  of  black  walnut,  a  lofty  pulpit,  and  bells. 
Himself  regularly  attended  in  full  dress  with  his  officers 
and  council,  and  a  guard  of  fifty  halberdiers  in  red  cloaks. 
and  sat  in  the  choir  in  a  green  velvet  chair  with  a  velvet 
cushion  to  kneel  on. 

Though  no   longer  gold-seekers  but  real  colonists,  the 
men  of  Virginia  were  not  such  colonists  as  the  Puritans. 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  41 

They  were  more  akin  in  character  to  the  Spaniard  on  the 
south  of  them,  who  made  the  Indian  work  for  him,  than 
to  the  New  Englander,  who  worked  for  himself.  To 
work  for  them  they  had  from  the  first  a  number  of  in 
dentured  servants,  or  bondsmen,  jail-birds,  many  of  them ; 
some  kidnapped  by  press  gangs  in  the  streets  of  London, 
all  of  depraved  character.  Afterwards  came  in  ever-in 
creasing  volume  African  slavery,  the  destined  bane  of 
Virginia  and  her  ultimate  ruin.  Thus  were  formed  the 
three  main  orders  of  Virginian  society :  the  planter  oli 
garchy:  the  "poor  whites,''  or  as  the  negro  dubbed  them, 
"  mean  white  trash  " ;  and  the  negro  slaves.  Middle  class, 
in  the  proper  sense  of  the  term,  there  could  hardly  be. 
The  poor  whites  were  destined,  after  two  centuries  of  a 
barbarous  and  debased  existence,  to  end  in  a  blaze  of 
glory  as  the  heroic  infantry  of  the  South. 

Virginia  was  not  like  New  England,  cooped  between 
mountains  and  the  sea ;  nor  was  the  soil  niggard,  though 
it  was  rapidly  exhausted  by  slave  labour^  The  planters 
were  far  apart,  taking  each  of  them  instead  of  the  small 
lots  of  the  New  Englander,  large  tracts  of  land.  Popu 
lation  instead  of  being  condensed  as  in  New  England  was 
scattered,  and  life  was  isolated  instead  of  being  intensely 
social.  There  was  nothing  worthy  of  the  name  of  a  town, 
much  less  of  a  city ;  though  Jamestown,  and  after  wards 
Williamsburg,  was  the  capital  of  politics,  pleasure,  and 
sport.  There  were  no  townships  nor  township  politics. 
The  divisions  were  shires  or  colossal  parishes.  The  parish, 
as  a  designation  at  once  ecclesiastical  and  administrative, 
was  adopted  from  England.  The  country  being  inter 
sected  by  rivers,  each  plantation  could  have,  and  prided 
itself  on  having  a  wharf  of  its  own,  at  which,  as  a  port 


42  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

of  entry,  ships  could  load  and  unload.  As  each  planter 
dealt  directly  with  the  old  country,  there  were  no  great 
seaports  nor  centres  of  distribution.  Virginia's  staple  was 
tobacco,  which  could  be  well  grown  by  slave  labour,  and 
required  large  estates  because  it  was  exhausting  to  the 
soil.  This  narcotic,  the  demand  for  which  increased  fast 
in  Europe,  was,  as  King  James  I  thought,  "  the  diabolical 
source "  of  Virginia's  wealth  and  grandeur.  An  official 
personage,  practically-minded,  to  whom  a  Virginian  de 
legation  had  commended  a  measure  for  the  good  of  souls, 
replied,  "  Damn  your  souls,  grow  tobacco."  An  attempt 
was  made  to  introduce  silk-growing  but  it  came  to  noth 
ing.  Industry  of  the  higher  kinds  is  shut  out  by  slavery ; 
the  population  to  which  it  gives  birth  would  be  socially 
and  politically  fatal,  as  well  as  economically  alien,  to  a 
slave-owning  community.  It  shows  the  crudity  of  Vir 
ginian  commerce  that  tobacco  was  not  only  the  staple  but 
the  currency  of  the  province,  long  after  New  England  had 
discarded  the  use  of  wampum  or  bullets  as  money. 

Such  was  the  birth  of  that  famous  planter-aristocracy 
which  made  so  desperate  a  fight  against  democracy,  first 
in  the  political  arena,  then  on  many  a  field  of  battle.  It 
dwelt,  save  when  it  was  debating,  dancing,  or  racing  at 
the  capital,  in  lonely  grandeur  beside  its  broad  rivers  and 
private  wharves,  in  mansions  styled  baronial,  and  in  what 
it  deemed  manorial  state,  fed  by  the  labour  of  slaves,  and 
surrounded  by  the  servility  of  poor  whites.  It  rode  in  its 
coaches-and-six,  the  six  horses  being  probably  not  more  than 
enough  to  drag  the  family  chariot  over  colonial  roads.  It 
had  its  trains  of  black  lacqueys  in  brilliant  liveries,  which 
they  hustled  on  when  a  stranger  approached.  But  in  its 
life  and  abodes  there  were  less  of  comfort  and  of  real 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  43 

elegance  than  of  grandeur.  It  spent  its  time  a  little  in 
politics,  more  in  fox-hunting,  racing,  gambling,  cock-fight 
ing,  and  general  dissipation.  It  had  plenty  on  its  board, 
and  commonly  drank  too  much  wine.  It  was  hospitable, 
as  rich  men  without  neighbours  and  craving  for  company 
always  are.  It  had  something,  and  fancied  that  it  had 
much  of  the  grand  manner,  the  social  grace,  the  chivalrous 
sentiment,  which  marked  the  territorial  aristocracies  of 
Europe.  It  was  no  doubt  brave  and  mettlesome,  rode  well, 
was  good  at  field  sports,  had  a  quick  sense  of  conventional 
honour,  and  was  ready  to  fight  duels.  Of  course,  living 
by  the  sweat  of  other  men's  brows,  it  was  free  from  any 
thing  that  is  sordid  in  the  industrial  or  commercial  char 
acter.  Not  parsimony  but  prodigality  was  its  fault,  and 
while  it  was  master  of  many  slaves  it  was  apt  itself  to  be 
the  slave  of  debt.  Some  of  the  planters  had,  among  their 
English  equipments,  English  books,  and  prided  themselves 
on  their  acquaintance  with  the  British  classics ;  but  the 
average  amount  of  culture  among  them  was  probably  low, 
and  their  College  of  William  and  Mary  was  no  mate  for 
Harvard. 

The  appearance  of  slavery  on  the  scene  when  other 
slavery  had  almost  disappeared  from  the  face  of  the  civil 
ized  world  opened  a  new  chapter  of  evil.  It  was  the 
slavery  of  colour,  indelible,  without  hope  of  fusion,  ut 
terly  debased  and  debasing,  and  of  all  slaveries  the  most 
degraded.  Its  character  was  impressed  on  the  slave  law. 
"  The  black,"  to  use  a  phrase  afterwards  made  memorable, 
"had  no  rights  which  the  white  man  was  bound  to  re 
spect."  A  master  was  not  answerable  for  the  murder  of 
his  slave,  the  law  assuming  that  he  would  not  wantonly 
destroy  his  own  property.  A  code  of  terror  guarded  the 


44  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

master  class.  Fugitive  slaves  were  hunted  down  like  wild 
beasts  and  the  fugitive  might  lawfully  be  shot  by  anyone 
on  sight.  To  quiet  all  doubt  it  was  expressly  enacted 
that  conversion  to  Christianity  was  no  bar  to  slavery.  In 
termarriage  between  whites  and  blacks  was  forbidden  as 
incest,  so  that  the  gulf  between  the  races  was  impassable. 
If  a  woman  bore  children  to  a  white  man,  she  carried  them 
with  her  into  slavery,  and  an  American  historian  tells  us 
that  the  offspring  of  men  of  station  might  be  seen  in  the 
slave  mart.  Emancipation  was  not  encouraged,  and  the 
emancipated  negro  was  treated  as  a  suspected  pariah. 
The  edge  of  the  law  seems  to  have  been  sharpened  in 
Virginia  after  a  negro  insurrection.  It  is  not  to  be  sup 
posed  that  the  picture  which  such  legislation  presents  was 
that  of  a  Virginian  planter's  household.  In  the  household 
the  relation  between  master  and  slave  no  doubt  was  often 
patriarchal  and  kind,  though  even  there  the  slave  can 
hardly  have  risen  morally  or  intellectually  to  a  higher 
condition  than  that  of  a  well  treated  horse  or  dog.  But 
on  large  plantations,  such  as  were  multiplied  in  after 
times,  more  in  other  slave  States  than  in  Virginia,  there 
being  no  personal  tie  between  master  and  slave,  the  slave 
was  a  beast  of  labour  to  be  used  up  without  mercy.  No 
community  which  had  such  a  code  could  be  healthy,  or 
fail  at  last  to  be  brought  into  conflict  with  the  advance  of 
moral  civilization.  Even  with  regard  to  the  indentured 
servants  the  law  was  harsh  and  degrading.  They  were 
liable  to  the  penalty  of  branding,  and  their  terms  of  ser 
vice  might  for  delinquencies  real  or  pretended  be  pro 
longed  to  perpetual  servitude.  Such  social  conditions 
might,  like  those  under  which  the  Roman  aristocracy  was 
formed,  give  birth  to  regicides,  but  they  could  scarcely 
give  birth  to  republicans  of  the  true  stamp. 


i.  THE    COLONIES.  45 

The  political  development  of  the  southern  colonies,  like 
their  industrial  and  social  development,  presented  a  strong 
contrast  to  that  of  New  England  commonwealths.  The 
industrial  and  social  character  of  a  community  is  sure, 
in  spite  of  constitutional  forms,  to  draw  the  political  char 
acter  with  it.  The  New  England  colonies  were  practical 
republics,  owing  a  nominal  allegiance  and  paying  occa 
sional  homage  to  a  monarchy  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  Virginia,  after  some  fluctuations  between  char 
tered  self-government  and  vice-regal  rule,  became  a  colonial 
monarchy  after  the  English  pattern,  with  a  governor  who 
was  the  delegate  of  the  king  and  a  little  image  of  royal 
majesty,  a  council,  nominated  by  the  governor,  which 
faintly  represented  the  House  of  Lords,  and  a  representa 
tive  assembly  which  stood  in  the  place  of  the  House  of 
Commons.  A  governor  wielded  more  personal  power  than 
was  left  to  the  king  at  home,  and  exercised  his  veto  freely 
when  that  of  the  king  had  been  virtually  resigned.  He 
also  exercised  freely  his  military  powers  and  his  powers  of 
appointment.  The  assembly,  however,  retained  the  power 
of  the  purse.  The  suffrage  was  at  one  time  general ;  after 
wards  it  was  limited  to  property.  But  nominal  freedom 
or  limitation  mattered  little,  since  power  was  really  in  the 
hands  of  the  planters  on  whom  most  of  the  poor  whites 
were  dependent.  The  planters  of  each  shire  administered 
local  government  and  justice  in  conclaves  like  the  English 
quarter  sessions,  and  with  more  than  the  authority  of  the 
English  squire.  In  oligarchical  Virginia,  taxation  took 
the  form  of  a  poll-tax,  whereas  in  republican  New  England 
people  were  taxed  according  to  their  means.  The  oligarchs 
were  not  the  more  inclined  to  submit  to  political  slavery 
because  they  owned  slaves.  They  were  tenacious  of  their 


46  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

own  constitutional  rights  as  Englishmen.  These  they 
maintained  proudly  against  the  governor,  as  the  Barons  had 
maintained  them  against  the  English  king,  and  so  far  they 
were  in  political  training  for  the  revolution. 

The  Church  of  England  was  established,  though  in  a 
loose  and  rather  ragged  way,  without  a  hierarchy,  as  well 
as  devoid  of  the  cathedrals  and  the  ancient  churches  which 
are  the  pillars  of  her  ascendancy  in  her  own  land.  Disper 
sion  of  the  population  must  have  been  much  against  church 
going,  and  in  Virginia  there  was  probably  little  of  religious 
life.  Such  notices  as  we  have  of  clerical  habits  lead  us 
to  think  that  there  was  at  least  one  Parson  Trulliber  to 
every  Parson  Adams,  perhaps  to  every  Dr.  Primrose.  The 
parson,  like  everybody  else  in  the  primitive  state  of  com 
merce,  was  paid  not  in  money  but  in  tobacco.  There  were 
laws  against  papists  as  in  England,  and  there  was  the  same 
contumelious  toleration  of  dissenters.  In  Western  Virginia 
was  a  settlement  of  Presbyterians,  driven  by  persecuting 
bishops  from  Ireland  with  hearts  full  of  bitter  feeling 
against  the  English  church  and  government,  as  they  were 
afterwards  to  show.  Here  there  was  religion,  and  the 
settlement  was  one  day  to  give  birth  to  a  singular  mixture 
of  Old  Testament  piety  with  slavery  militant,  in  the  per 
son  of  "  Stonewall  "  Jackson. 

Saving  the  tinge  of  culture  boasted  by  some  of  the  plant 
ers,  there  was  no  education  or  literature.  A  good  royal 
governor  could  say  in  1670,  "I  thank  God  there  are  no 
free  schools  nor  printing  and  I  hope  we  shall  not  have  these 
hundred  years.  For  learning  has  brought  disobedience  into 
the  world  and  printing  has  divulged  them  and  libels  against 
the  best  of  Governments  :  God  keep  us  from  both."  In  a 
slave  state  a  system  of  free  schools  or  general  education  on 


I.  THE   COLONIES.  47 

any  footing  would  not  only  have  been  uncongenial,  it 
would  have  been  dynamite.  Schools  even  for  the  rich 
there  were  few,  if  any.  Young  planters  were  brought  up 
at  home  under  tutors  who  usually  had  not  much  to  teach, 
and  whose  pupils  were  not  likely  to  be  docile.  Of  the 
wealthiest  some  went  to  the  universities  of  the  old  land. 
Law  and  medicine  must  have  been  weak. 

Virginia  had  of  all  the  colonies  the  best  reputation  at  the 
English  court.  It  was  royalist  to  the  core  and  thoroughly 
loyal.  Of  this  its  title  "  The  Old  Dominion  "  is  a  monu 
ment.  It  denounced  as  impious  the  execution  of  Charles  I 
and  afforded  an  asylum  to  many  of  the  defeated  cavaliers, 
whose  traditions  could  not  fail  to  import  a  fresh  strain  of 
loyalty  into  the  Virginian  character.  It  bowed  to  the 
Commonwealth  and  the  Protectorate,  but  exulted  in  the 
Restoration.  There  was,  however,  a  Puritan  section,  which 
having  raised  its  head  under  the  Commonwealth,  resisted 
the  Absolutist  and  Anglican  reaction  and  could  only  be 
put  down  by  force.  That  was  the  time  of  Governor  Berke-  1642. 
ley,  who  so  frankly  uttered  his  sentiments  on  the  subject 
of  free  schools  and  printing.  He  was  the  model  of  a 
royalist  governor,  able  and  apparently  beneficent  in  his 
way,  but  a  devout  believer  in  prerogative  and  an  extermi 
nator  of  Puritans  and  Republicans.  His  vigour  brought  on 
a  rebellion  which  seems  to  have  had  its  origin  among  the 
freemen  of  the  poorer  class  and  was  headed  by  a  Virginian 
Gracchus  named  Bacon.  This  for  a  moment  convulsed  the 
colony.  Jamestown  was  razed  to  the  ground  by  the  insur 
gents.  But  Bacon  died  suddenly  in  mid-career.  His  fol-  1676, 
lowing,  drawn  from  a  small  and  feeble  section,  at  once 
broke  up,  and  the  governor  held  a  Bloody  Assize  which  is 
said  to  have  brought  on  him  a  contemptuous  ejaculation 


48  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

from  Charles  II,  who  was  not  a  man  of  blood  except  when 
mercy  would  give  more  trouble. 

Bacon's  rebellion  seems  to  have  been  brought  on  partly 
by  a  suspicion  that  the  governor  had  an  underhand  con 
nection  for  commercial  purposes  with  the  Indians,  and 
was  disposed  to  protect  them  against  the  whites.  The 
relations  of  the  two  races  in  the  land  of  Pocahontas  were 
pretty  murderous,  and  could  hardly  fail  to  affect  the 
character  of  the  dominant  race,  but  the  Indians  of  the 
South  were  less  ferocious  and  formidable  than  those 
whom  the  Puritan  encountered  in  the  North. 

1633.  Maryland,  in  its  origin,  was  in  two  respects  peculiar : 
it  was  founded  not  by  a  chartered  company  but  by  P. 
proprietor,  and  its  projector  was  a  Roman  Catholic.  Lore 
Baltimore,  a  statesman  who  had  taken  great  interest  ii 
colonization  and  had  convinced  himself  that  companies 
failed  through  mismanagement  and  greed,  obtained  i, 
grant  of  the  territory  from  the  crown.  He  was  a  convert, 
to  Roman  Catholicism,  and  endowed  the  colony  with 
toleration  for  the  special  benefit  of  a  church  which,  else 
where  dominant  and  persecuting,  was  depressed  and 
persecuted  in  England.  Lord  Baltimore  dying,  his  son 
Cecil  founded  Maryland.  Jesuits  came  out  with  the  first 
colonists  and  began  their  missionary  work  among  the 
Indians.  Neither  of  the  peculiar  features,  however, 
proved  lasting.  The  proprietor,  whose  authority  was  by 
his  patent  that  of  a  prince  palatine,  found  it  necessary  to 
compound  with  the  English  tendencies  of  the  free  settlers 
and  allow  himself  to  be  reduced  to  the  position  of  a  con 
stitutional  ruler,  with  an  assembly  of  the  usual  kind,  in 
which  was  vested  the  all-important  power  of  taxation. 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  49 

By  the  victory  of  Puritanism  over  Charles  I  in  England, 
Puritanism  in  Maryland,  where  it  formed  an  element  of 
the  motley  population,  was  incited  to  strike  for  power, 
and  it  defeated  the  party  of  the  Pope  and  the  Proprietary 
in  a  little  pitched  battle  at  Providence.  In  that  fight,  as 
at  Naseby  and  AVorcester,  according  to  the  Puritan  writer 
of  "Babylon's  Fall  in  England,"  "  God  did  appear  wonder 
ful  in  the  field  and  in  the  hearts  of  the  people :  all  con 
fessed  Him  to  be  the  only  worker  of  this  victory  and 
deliverance."  With  the  Restoration  returned  the  govern 
ment  of  the  Proprietary,  well  administered  by  Charles 
Calvert,  the  third  Lord  Baltimore,  under  whom  religious 
quarrels  were  hushed,  toleration  reigned,  tobacco  was 
grown,  and  the  province  prospered.  But  the  Revolution 
in  England  brought  another  rising  of  Protestants  against 
toleration  of  the  Catholics,  and  in  the  end  Maryland  was 
made  a  royal  province,  received  a  royal  governor,  and  was 
settled  politically  on  the  regular  model  with  a  council 
and  representative  assembly.  The  ecclesiastical  settle 
ment  was  finally  the  same,  in  form  at  least,  as  that  of 
England,  the  Church  of  England  being  established, 
though  probably  in  little  force,  and  Protestant  dissenters 
being  tolerated,  while  toleration  was,  at  least  legally, 
withheld  from  Catholics  in  the  colony  of  their  own 
foundation.  The  culture  of  tobacco  led  to  the  employ 
ment  of  slave  labour.  Maryland  was  drawn  within 
the  fatal  circle  of  the  slave  States,  and  became  the  do 
main  of  a  planter  class  like  that  of  Virginia,  but  less 
oligarchical.  Nothing  in  political  physiology  is  more 
marked  than  the  influence  of  tobacco,  cotton,  and  rice 
on  the  social  and  political  character  of  the  Southern 
States. 


50  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

1671  The  Carolinas,  like  Maryland,  were  a  proprietary  colony 
5700.  founded  by  a  group  of  leading  men  in  England,  to  whom 
Charles  II  made  a  rather  blind  grant  of  a  territory  already 
in  part  occupied  by  settlers,  and  who  appear  not  only  to 
have  been  desirous  of  gain  but  ambitious  of  founding  a 
model  community.  Among  them  was  Shaftesbury,  whose 
hand  we  seem  to  trace  in  a  special  clause  peculiar  to  this 
charter,  which  in  consideration  of  the  distance  from  home 
authorized  the  proprietaries  to  establish  any  religion  they 
chose,  a  curious  indication  of  the  political  character  of 
the  English  State  religion.  For  an  ideal  constitution  the 
proprietaries  applied  to  the  wisdom  of  Locke,  and  the 
wisdom  of  Locke  gave  them  a  Grand  Model  which, 
especially  considering  that  it  was  intended  for  the  rough 
population  of  a  new  settlement,  may  be  regarded  as  the 
most  awful  of  warnings  to  political  castle  builders.  It  it 
an  ineffable  structure  of  the  feudal  type,  with  a  hierarchy 
of  hereditary  land  owners  under  the  names  of  Landgraves 
and  Caciques  —  the  latter  name  being  probably  intended 
as  a  compliment  to  native  sentiment  —  a  division  of  the 
land  into  seignories,  and,  what  seems  incredible  as  a 
proposal  of  Locke,  a  race  of  hereditary  tenants  attached 
like  villeins-regardant  to  the  soil.  To  keep  government 
in  the  hands  of  intelligence  and  property  seems  to  have 
been  the  philosopher's  aim.  This  scheme  the  proprie 
taries  actually  tried  to  put  in  force.  It  could  produce 
nothing  but  disgust,  revolt,  and  confusion.  The  only 
thing  in  it  worthy  of  Locke  is  complete  religious  tolera 
tion.  In  the  course  of  the  political  squabbles  which  inevi 
tably  ensued,  South  Carolina  was  severed  from  North 
Carolina  and  transferred  from  the  proprietaries  to  a  royal 
governor.  Into  North  Carolina,  attracted  by  toleration, 


i.  THE    COLONIES.  51 

came  Huguenots  from  France,  persecuted  Covenanters 
from  Scotland  and  other  religious  refugees,  whose  char 
acter,  together  with  the  climate  and  husbandry  of  an 
upland  country,  was  the  saving  of  North  Carolina,  so  that 
though  in  the  slave  group  she  was  scarcely  of  it.  But  of 
South  Carolina  the  staple  became  partly  the  fatal  tobacco, 
largely  the  yet  more  fatal  staple  of  rice,  grown  on 
swampy  tracts  where  white  men  could  not  work.  The 
consequence  was  a  large  importation  of  negro  slaves. 
South  Carolina  had  also  a  sinister  connection  with  the 
slave-owning  and  buccaneering  West  Indies.  Corsairs 
such  as  Captain  Kidd  and  Black  Beard  found  shelter 
in  her  ports.  In  the  upshot  she  became  the  typical 
slave  state,  the  heart  of  slavery  and  the  focus  of  all 
the  ideas  and  all  the  ambitions  connected  with  the  sys 
tem  ;  while  Charleston,  her  social  capital  and  seaport, 
became  the  paradise  of  planter  society  with  its  luxury, 
state,'  and  pride.  Her  slave  code  transcended  even  that 
of  Virginia  in  cruelty,  and  expressed  still  more  vividly 
the  terrors  of  a  dominant  race.  Everyone  who  found 
a  slave  abroad  without  a  pass  was  to  flog  him  on  the 
spot.  All  negro  houses  were  to  be  searched  once  a  fort 
night  for  arms  and  for  stolen  goods.  For  the  fourth  lar 
ceny  a  slave  was  to  suffer  death,  and  the  kind  of  death  was 
left  to  the  discretion  of  the  judge.  For  running  away 
a  fourth  time  the  slave  was  to  undergo  mutilation.  For 
punishing  a  slave  so  that  he  died,  no  one  was  to  suffer  any 
penalty.  For  the  wilful  murder  of  a  slave  the  penalty 
was  a  fine  of  forty  pounds.  It  need  not  be  supposed 
that  the  most  revolting  articles  of  the  code  were  often 
put  in  force  or  that  they  represent  the  general  relations 
between  master  and  slave. 


52  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

1733.  Georgia    was    founded    by    the    philanthropic    General 
Oglethorpe,  whose  heart  had   been  wrung  with  pity  for 
the  sufferings  of  debtors  imprisoned  under  the  barbarous 
law  of  those  days.     It  was  to  be  the  refuge  of  the  pauper 
and  the  bankrupt,  and  was  to  empty  the  workhouses  of 
England.     Another  object  was  the  erection  of  a  bulwark 
against  the  Spaniards  of  Florida.     Unluckily  the  settlers 
chosen,  instead    of   being  labourers,   were    men   who  had 
failed  in  trade  and  were  good  for  nothing  as  husbandmen. 

1734.  Better    elements    of    population    came    in,    Highlanders, 
Moravians,    Protestants    of    Salzburg   expelled    by    their 
persecuting   Prince   Bishop.     But   the    shiftless   and  lazy 
immigrants  called  at  once  for  rum,  which  had  been  pro 
hibited,  and  for  slaves  to  do  the  work.     By  the  workers 
the  entrance  of  slavery  was  opposed,  but  the  climate  and 
the    contagion    of    the    neighbouring   colonies   prevailed. 
Slavery  forced  its  entrance,  and   Georgia  was  numbered 
with  the  slave  states.     It  is  not  on  the  government  of  the 
mother  country  that  in  this  case  the  blame  can  be  cast. 

1736.  In  its  earlier  days  the  colony  was  the  scene  of  an  unfort 
unate  episode  in  the  life  of  Wesley,  who  there,  after  a 
strange  love  affair,  encountered  an  evil-speaking  genera 
tion  ;  and  of  the  preaching  of  Whitefield,  who  kindled  a 
flame  of  religion  by  his  preaching,  but  pleaded  for  slav 
ery,  seeing  in  it  an  instrument  of  conversion.  Whatever 
the  special  fancy  of  a  founder  might  be,  climate,  soil, 
and  natural  circumstances  generally,  together  with  human 
nature,  soon  prevailed  over  his  will.  Model  colonies  are 
apt  to  come  to  nothing  except  as  they  may  enlist  settlers 
of  high  character,  and  thus  lay  a  good  social  foundation. 


i.  THE    COLONIES.  53 

The  group  of  Middle  States  was  formed  round  the  Dela 
ware,  New  York,  and  Chesapeake  bays.  Pennsylvania,  as  1081. 
all  know,  was  the  philanthropic  Utopia  of  the  renowned 
and  somewhat  enigmatic  character  whose  name  it  bears. 
Quakerism  was  by  this  time  clothed  and  in  its  right  mind. 
It  had  passed  from  George  Fox  to  Barclay.  It  was  be 
coming  commercial,  even  eminently  commercial,  and  its 
political  quietism,  which  in  Penn  assumed  the  form  of  an 
equivocal  connection  with  the  court,  distinguished  it  fa 
vourably  from  the  political  sects  in  the  eyes  of  the 
Stuarts.  Partly  in  satisfaction  of  a  debt  due  from  the 
crown  to  his  estate,  Penn  was  made  lord  of  Pennsylvania 
with  almost  kingly  powers,  including  those  of  peace  and 
war,  which  he  of  course  intended  to  exercise  only  in  the 
interests  of  peace.  His  scheme  of  government  was  popu 
lar.  He  renounced  for  himself  and  his  successors  any 
power  of  doing  mischief,  "  that  the  will  of  one  man  might 
not  hinder  the  good  of  the  whole  country."  The  other 
characteristics  which  he  impressed  upon  his  settlement 
were  religious  toleration,  a  mild  criminal  law  with  the 
reformation  of  the  criminal  in  view,  and  good  treatment 
of  the  Indians.  Toleration  was  extended  to  all  who  be 
lieved  in  God  and  would  be  good  citizens,  though  Chris 
tianity  was  recognized  as  the  religion  of  the  community  by 
the  enforced  observance  of  Sunday.  Murder  was  the  only 
capital  offence.  There  was  a  moral  and  social  code  of  the 
Puritan  type,  but  there  was  little  of  theocratic  power  to 
enforce  it.  To  Penn's  good  treatment  of  the  Indians  his 
colony  owed  peace  in  that  quarter  and  uninterrupted 
progress.  Slavery  was  not  excluded.  That  Penn  himself 
once  held  slaves  a  will,  though  not  his  last,  remains  to 
show ;  but  he  strove,  though  in  vain,  to  secure  for  the 


54  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

slaves  the  right  of  legal  marriage.  The  soil  and  climate, 
however,  combined  with  the  general  character  of  the  set 
tlers,  shut  out  the  pest.  To  Pennsylvania  presently  came 
a  large  exodus  of  Germans,  driven  from  their  homes  by 
war.  They  gave  the  province  a  body  of  laborious  hus 
bandmen,  but  rather  bucolic  citizens.  Their  descendants, 
who  are  called  the  Pennsylvania  Dutch,  have  preserved 
the  two-fold  character  as  well  as  the  traces  of  their  an 
cestral  language.  Penn,  in  spite  of  his  philanthropy  and 
liberalism,  became  embroiled  like  other  governors  and 
proprietaries  with  his  lieges.  His  son,  whom  evil  associa 
tions  had  made  a  libertine,  renounced  Quakerism  in  wrath 
at  the  treatment  of  his  father  by  the  sect.  Toleration 
made  Pennsylvania  a  religious  museum.  In  it,  besides 
the  Quakers,  were  Anglicans,  Lutherans,  Scotch  Presby 
terians,  Palatines,  Ridge  Hermits,  Dunkers,  and  Pietists. 
Roman  Catholics  alone  were  here,  as  elsewhere,  under  a 
ban  of  suspicion  which  the  persecuting  violence  of  Louis 
XIV  and  the  Prince  Bishop  of  Salzburg  might  partly 
excuse.  Power,  with  a  large  share  of  the  commerce  and 
wealth  of  which  Philadelphia  became  the  seat,  was  in  the 
hands  of  the  Quakers,  who  as  rulers  were  prudent,  thrifty, 
and  always  averse  from  war.  To  war,  however  necessary, 
they  would  contribute  only  under  the  form  which  satisfied 
their  own  consciences,  of  a  gift  to  the  government,  for  the 
use  of  which  the  conscience  of  the  government  was  to 
answer,  or,  as  on  one  occasion  they  did,  as  a  supply  for  the 
purchase  of  bread,  flour,  wheat,  or  other  grain,  the  other 
grain  being  understood  to  be  gunpowder.  Their  institu 
tions  sustained  their  reputation  for  philanthropy,  and  by 
them  the  first  lunatic  asylum  in  America  was  founded. 
1614.  New  York,  which  its  ample  territory  and  the  possession 


i.  THE    COLONIES.  55 

of  the  most  magnificent  of  harbours  have  now  made  the 
Empire  State  and  the  seat  of  the  commercial  capital  of  the 
Union,  was  originally  New  Netherland,  a  Dutch  colony 
founded  in  the  golden  age  of  Holland's  naval  greatness. 
Delaware,  the  neighbouring  state,  was  a  colony  of  Sweden  1627, 
founded  in  the  glorious  days  of  Gustavus  Adolphus.  The 
Dutchman  by  his  superior  power  mastered  the  Swede ; 
the  Englishman  mastered  the  Dutchman.  Hardly  could  1664. 
the  two  groups  of  English  colonies  north  and  south  have 
suffered  a  wedge  of  alien  dominion  to  be  thrust  between 
them.  Dutch  colonization  seems  to  have  been  barely 
on  a  par  with  Dutch  commerce  and  seamanship.  New 
Netherland  was  dominated  by  the  patroons,  magnates 
invested  with  vast  grants  of  land,  who  exercised  seignorial 
sway  and  lived  in  seignorial  state.  The  ancient  title  is 
still  cherished,  and  about  half  a  century  ago  the  claim 
of  a  patroon  for  services  to  be  rendered  by  the  tenants 
upon;  what  had  once  been  his  domain  gave  birth  to  a  petty 
civil  war.  At  Albany  are  still  Dutch  houses,  Dutch  faces, 
and  families  rejoicing  in  Dutch  pedigrees.  There  is  still 
a  Dutch  Reformed  Church,  and  an  old  lady  being  told 
that  "  Dutch  "  was  to  be  dropped  in  order  that  the  char 
acter  of  the  church  might  be  universal,  replied  that  she 
did  not  want  the  church  to  be  universal,  it  was  the  church 
of  the  old  Dutch  families  of  that  state.  After  going 
through  the  usual  political  struggles  and  sufferings  —  a 
temporary  suspension  of  her  liberties  under  James  II  and 
his  satrap  Andros  followed  by  a  tragi-comic  revolution  in 
which  Leisler,  a  patriot  leader,  mounted  the  scaffold  of 
Russell  and  Algernon  Sidney  —  New  York  settled  down 
politically  into  the  regular  form  of  the  English  constitution 
adapted  to  the  colonies,  and  with  the  usual  constitutional 


56  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

bickerings  between  the  governor  and  the  assembly,  the 
quarrel  being  chiefly  here  as  elsewhere  about  money. 
1664.  New  Jersey  was  created  by  dismemberment  from  New 
York.  It  had  a  motley  population  and  hardly  any  history 
distinct  from  that  of  the  larger  state.  It  became  a  coun 
try  of  gentlemen  farmers  with  a  peasantry.  It  received, 
however,  a  colony  of  persecuted  Covenanters  which  made 
it  one  of  the  chief  seats  of  Presbyterianism  and  of 
which  Princeton  University  may  be  regarded  as  a  noble 
memorial. 

The  population  of  the  New  England  colonies  was  almost 
purely  English,  and  reflected  the  virtues  and  faults  of 
English  character  as  seen  in  the  Englishman  of  the  middle 
class,  though  with  Puritan  and  colonial  modifications. 
The  population  of  the  Middle  States  was  very  mixed. 
It  comprised,  besides  Englishmen,  detachments  or  waifs  of 
almost  every  protestant  nation  and  church  in  Europe ; 
Scotch  Highlanders  and  Lowlanders,  Scotch-Irish,  French 
Huguenots,  Germans  from  different  parts  of  Germany, 
Moravians,  Dutch,  Swedes,  Finns,  and  a  few  Jews.  But 
almost  everywhere  the  English  language  prevailed.  Every 
where  there  was  a  constitution  after  the  British  model, 
with  a  governor  representing  the  king  or  proprietary,  and 
a  representative  assembly  with  two  houses  answering  to 
the  two  Houses  of  Parliament.  Local  self-government  in 
the  Middle  States  was  a  mean  between  the  intense  local 
life  of  the  New  England  townships  and  the  political  lan 
guor  of  the  Virginian  shire.  There  were  not  generally  any 
common  schools  or  any  regular  provision  for  education, 
but  there  was  education,  there  was  learning,  printing  was 
free.  Practical  toleration  prevailed,  saving  an  occasional 
outbreak  of  intolerance  against  Roman  Catholics,  whose 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  57 

church,  it  must  be  borne  in  mind,  was  always  giving  pro 
vocation  by  persecuting  wherever  she  had  the  power.  The 
social  code  was  far  less  strict  than  in  Puritan  New  Eng 
land.  The  keeping  of  the  Sabbath  was  probably  about 
the  only  Puritan  law  that  was  really  enforced.  Theatri 
cals,  sternly  banished  from  New  England,  found  reception 
in  the  Middle  States.  Slavery  everywhere  existed  by 
law,  but  it  was  kept  down  by  the  ascendancy  of  free 
labour  and  by  the  nature  of  the  products.  That  the  negro 
in  New  York  was  a  slave  appeared  with  dire  distinctness 
when,  in  consequence  of  a  vague  alarm  of  incendiarism 
in  New  York  city,  upon  evidence  utterly  disreputable  and  1741. 
without  fair  trial,  thirteen  negroes  were  burnt  at  the  stake 
and  eighteen  were  hanged.  A  Catholic  priest,  accused 
of  instigating  the  negroes,  was  with  them  judicially 
murdered. 

With  James  II  royal  tyranny  ceased,  but  parliamentary  1688. 
tyranny  began.  Parliament,  now  the  supreme  power, 
made  itself  the  legislative  organ  of  a  commercial  interest, 
animated  by  that  blind  and  unscrupulous  greed  which  has 
been  the  bane  and  disgrace  of  commerce  and  continues 
to  animate  the  monopolist  at  the  present  day.  By  the 
Trade  and  Navigation  Acts  England  sought  to  engross 
not  only  the  carrying  trade  but  the  general  trade  of  her 
colonies,  and  shut  them  out  from  the  markets  of  the  world. 
In  doing  this  she  only  followed  the  practice  of  the  time, 
and  gave  effect  to  the  belief-  universally  accepted,  and 
endorsed  even  by  Montesquieu,  that  colonies  were  planted 
for  the  commercial  benefit  of  the  imperial  country.  No 
one  had  yet  learned  to  think  of  them  as  the  germs  of  inde 
pendent  nations.  The  real  interests  even  of  the  imperial 


68  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

country  were  sacrificed,  as  Adam  Smith  showed,  to  those 
of  the  merchants,  who  were  the  principal  instigators  of  the 
policy.  So  far,  however,  from  being  the  chief est,  Great 
Britain  was  the  least  of  sinners  in  this  respect,  and  Adairi 
Smith  might  say  with  truth  that  her  policy  was  less  illib 
eral  and  oppressive  than  that  of  any  other  nation.  France 
strangled  by  monopoly  the  fur  trade  of  Canada.  Spain  t 
allowed  her  colonists  to  trade  only  with  the  single  port  o  c 
Cadiz.  England,  while  she  trammelled  the  trade  of  he".1 
colonies  afforded  them  the  best  of  markets  ;  especially  did 
she  afford  the  best  of  markets  for  the  timber  and  marine 
stores  of  New  England.  More  odious  even  than  the  re 
straints  upon  colonial  trade  were  the  restraints  upon 
colonial  manufactures.  The  colonists  were  not  allowed 
to  make  woollens,  steel,  hats,  or  any  other  articles  by  th<3 
manufacture  of  which  they  would  compete  with  the  mother 
country.  This  seemed  no  injustice  to  Chatham,  who  pro 
claimed  the  right  of  the  imperial  country  to  restrain  tha 
colonies  from  manufacturing  even  a  horseshoe  or  a 
hobnail.  Royal  claims  to  trees  of  a  certain  size,  as  the 
perquisite  of  the  royal  navy,  had  been  at  one  time  a  just 
cause  of  discontent.  If  England  crippled  colonial  trade 
with  her  restrictions  she  tried  to  foster  it  with  bounties, 
while  of  the  articles  most  important  to  colonial  trade  some 
were  exempt  from  restrictions.  The  Navigation  Act  seems 
to  have  stimulated  colonial  ship-building  which  was  very 
prosperous.  Yet  the  system  might  have  been  intolerable 
had  not  the  pressure  of  the  commercial  fetters  been  re 
lieved  by  salutary  smuggling.  In  fact  the  commercial 
restrictions  seem  to  have  been  systematically  disregarded. 
1695.  The  Board  of  Trade,  which  had  been  called  into  existence 
by  the  growth  of  British  commerce,  acted  as  the  guardian 


i.  THE    COLONIES.  59 

power  of  British  monopoly,  having  its  sentinels  in  the 
colonial  governors,  on  whose  information  it  was  always 
complaining  of  violations  of  the  Trade  and  Navigation 
Acts.  It  had  even  the  assurance  to  propose  the  abroga 
tion  of  such  colonial  charters  as  remained,  in  order  that 
the  sweep  of  its  action  might  be  unconfined.  After  all, 
the  gains  of  the  imperial  country  itself  from  this  wretched 
policy  cannot  have  anything  like  equalled  the  expense  of 
defending  the  colonies.  Certainly  they  did  not  counter 
vail  the  indirect  losses  from  the  depression  of  the  colonial 
trade,  the  benefit  of  which,  had  it  been  allowed  free  de 
velopment,  England  more  than  any  other  nation  would 
have  enjoyed. 

Wrangling  between  the  governor  as  the  organ  of  pre 
rogative  and  the  assembly  as  the  trustee  of  liberty  went 
on  in  almost  all  the  colonies ;  Virginia  and  Maryland 
almost  alone  enjoying,  in  their  later  days  at  least,  some 
thing'  like  political  peace.  The  executive,  fitfully  sup 
ported  by  the  home  government,  strove  to  make  itself 
independent  by  means  of  fixed  revenues  and  salaries, 
while  the  assembly  strove  to  keep  the  executive  depend 
ent  on  it  by  a  system  of  annual  grants.  Supplies  for  the 
colonial  wars  were  another  subject  of  contention,  especially 
when  the  colony  lay  remote  from  the  seat  of  war.  Nor 
was  there  less  of  niggardliness  and  fractiousness  on  the 
side  of  the  assemblies  than  there  was  of  a  disposition  to 
encroach  on  the  side  of  the  representatives  of  the  crown. 
These  embroilments  are  recounted  with  glee  by  historians 
who  deem  them  the  training  school  of  patriotism  and  pre 
paratory  to  the  struggle  for  independence.  But  such  a 
view  would  seem  to  identify  patriotism  with  resistance  to 
government  and  to  glorify  revolution.  The  revolution  in 


60  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP 

which  these  bickerings  ended  in  fact  did  not  a  little 
to  foster  such  sentiments.  Anglo-Saxon  love  of  liberty  ii 
the  colonies,  strong  from  the  beginning,  needed  no  such 
contentious  training,  and  right  reason  will  only  deplore; 
the  retention  of  a  tie  of  which  strife  was  the  inevitable 
consequence,  which  was  at  last  broken  by  civil  war,  and 
has  left  a  heritage  of  malignant  memories  behind.  Revo 
lution  is  the  medicine  not  the  bread  of  nations,  and  genu 
ine  patriotism  in  ordinary  times  is  loyal  co-operation  with 
authority. 

Of  the  governors  sent  out  from  England,  some  wero 
bad,  being  men  appointed  from  corrupt  motives  in  an  era 
of  political  corruption,  ruined  retainers  of  a  party  who 
came  to  retrieve  their  fortunes,  sometimes  by  illicit  mean^, 
or  Englishmen  ignorant  of  colonial  character  and  unsuited 
in  temper  for  their  work.  But  some,  as  Bellomont  in 
New  York,  Spotswood  in  Virginia,  Calvert  in  Maryland, 
Archdale  and  Blake  in  Carolina,  were  good  ;  and  when 
the  governor  was  good,  it  is  not  unlikely  that  for  quiet 
citizens,  for  all  to  whom  politics  were  not  a  trade  or  a 
game,  his  rule  may  have  been  as  beneficent  and  as  moral 
as  any  which  this  continent  has  seen  or  is  likely  soon  to 
see.  One  good  service  the  governors,  and  the  home  gov 
ernment  by  which  they  were  supported,  certainly  did,  they 
repressed  the  general  tendency  of  the  colonies  to  raise  the 
wind  by  the  issue  of  paper  money.  Appointments  to  sub 
ordinate  offices  in  the  colonies  seem  to  have  been  abused 
and  the  evil  probably  extended  to  the  judiciary.  Such 
was  sure,  especially  in  bad  times,  to  be  the  consequence 
of  attempting  to  govern  across  an  ocean  a  country  greatly 
differing  from  the  imperial  country  in  circumstances  and 
in  the  character  of  its  people.  Mutual  ignorance  was  and 
always  will  be  in  itself  fatal  to  transatlantic  tutelage. 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  61 

Another  source  of  friction  was  the  endeavour  of  the 
Church  of  England  to  establish  itself  in  the  colonies  on  the 
necks  of  those  upon  whom  high  churchmen  looked  down 
as  dissenters.  The  Society  for  the  Propagation  of  the  Gos 
pel  did  good  work  in  improving  the  character  of  the  colo 
nial  clergy,  but  it  was  a  society  for  the  propagation  of 
episcopacy  at  the  same  time.  Episcopacy  was  backed  by 
the  court  and  the  Tory  party,  ever  faithful  to  the  policy  of 
the  monarch  who  said  "no  Bishop,  no  King."  The  Rev. 
Mr.  Miller,  an  episcopal  clergyman,  writing  from  New 
York  to  the  Bishop  of  London,  gives  a  deplorable  picture 
of  colonial  society  in  which  he  says  :  "  God's  grace  having 
been  withdrawn,  the  Evil  One  has  it  all  his  own  way." 
Of  this  the  cause  in  Mr.  Miller's  opinion  is  that  there  are 
no  churches  but  only  meeting  houses  with  none  but  "  pre 
tended  ministers,"  who,  if  they  have  any  orders  at  all,  are 
Presbyterians  or  Independents  and  are  slaves  to  the  pleas 
ure  of' their  congregations.  His  specific  is  the  importation 
of  a  bishop  as  suffragan  to  the  Bishop  of  London  with  a 
salary  of  XI, 500  a  year  and  the  King's  Farm  for  his  palace. 
The  "  pretended  ministers  "  would  be  sure  to  concur  with 
the  Evil  One  in  objecting  to  the  application  of  this  remedy. 
To  the  Puritan  of  New  England  above  all  episcopacy  was 
most  hateful.  Dread  of  its  introduction  disposed  the 
puritan  clergy  to  revolution. 

Added  to  all  was  the  general  tendency  of  the  imperial 
people  to  bear  themselves  haughtily  towards  those  of  the 
dependencies  and  of  the  people  of  the  dependencies  to  resent 
imperial  haughtiness.  This  was  an  inevitable  incident  of 
the  relation.  Every  citizen  of  the  imperial  country  felt 
himself,  as  Franklin  said,  part  of  a  sovereign ;  and  while 
the  colonist  acknowledged  a  superior  his  vanity  smarted. 
In  some  measure  it  is  so  still. 


62  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

By  this  time  the  political  press  was  born,  the  Nevr 
England  Courant  having  appeared  in  1722  and  a  political 
journal  at  New  York  having  been  brought  out  not  long 
afterwards;  and,  though  the  giant  was  yet  in  the  cradle, 
journalism  was  not  long  in  becoming  an  organ  of  democratic 
agitation.  It  appears  that  in  1765,  when  the  fatal  era  was 
approaching,  there  were  over  forty  newspapers  in  America . 
Unwillingness  to  submit  to  imperial  control  and  nascent 
tendencies  towards  independence  were  already  visible,  and 
formed  the  burden  of  complaints  transmitted  by  colonial 
governors  or  officers  to  the  home  government.  Admiral 
Warren,  who  had  been  acting  with  New  Englanders, 
describes  them  to  the  ministry  as  having  "  the  highest 
notions  of  the  rights  and  liberties  of  Englishmen  and  indeed 
as  almost  Levellers."  A  suspicion  that  the  plantations 
were  "  not  without  thoughts  of  throwing  off  their  depend 
ence  "  prevailed  in  England,  and  the  lieutenant  governor 
of  New  York  exhorted  his  lieges  to  allay  it  by  a  grant  of  a 
fixed  revenue.  It  is  true  that  in  reply  the  members  of  the 
assembly  took  it  upon  themselves  to  vouch  that  not  one 
person  in  the  province  had  any  such  thought  or  desire,  "for 
under  what  government  could  they  be  better  protected  or 
their  liberties  so  well  secured  ?  "  The  colonists  of  England 
did  enjoy  of  political  liberty  a  large,  of  personal  liberty  a 
full,  measure.  In  spite  of  all  the  commercial  restrictions 
the  colonies  greatly  prospered,  their  population  rapidly 
increased,  and  most  favourable  pictures  of  their  condition 
and  progress  were  drawn  by  observers  at  the  time. 
1706  A  characteristic  as  well  as  a  memorable  product  of  colo- 
1^0  nial  civilization  at  this  epoch  was  Benjamin  Franklin,  by 
birth  and  education  a  New  Englander,  by  adoption  a  Penn- 
sylvanian.  He  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  an  offspring 


i.  THE   COLONIES.  63 

of  the  theocracy,  inasmuch  as  he  was  a  latitudinarian  in 
religion  and  had  a  natural  son.  But  he  was  an  offspring 
of  New  England  Puritanism  grown  mellow.  His  commer 
cial  shrewdness,  his  practical  inventiveness,  his  fundamental 
integrity,  his  public  spirit,  his  passion  for  improvement, 
were  native  to  his  community  in  the  phase  which  it  had 
now  reached,  no  less  than  were  his  "  Poor  Richard  "  phi 
losophy  of  life  and  the  absence  in  him  of  anything  spiritual 
or  romantic.  He  it  was  who  in  his  boyhood  had  suggested 
to  his  father  that  much  time  might  be  saved  by  saying 
grace  at  once  over  the  whole  barrel  of  red  herrings.  He 
leads  up  the  mighty  army  of  American  inventors.  At 
the  same  time  though  no  revolutionist  by  nature  he  was  the 
destined  harbinger  of  the  Revolution.  He  had  been  the 
first  projector  of  a  general  union  of  the  colonies.  His  figure 
marks  the  transition  to  the  revolutionary  and  national 
period  which  is  now  opening  from  that  of  the  Puritan 
commonwealth. 


CHAPTER   II. 

REVOLUTION,    INDEPENDENCE,    AND    UNION. 

TT  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  the  relation  between 
the  imperial  country  and  a  colonial  dependency  was 
radically  false.  It  became  more  manifestly  false  as  tho 
colony  grew  in  strength  and  every  conceivable  need  o: 
tutelage  passed  away.  Separation  was  sure  to  come.  lj 
was  visibly  approaching.  But  its  arrival  was  delayed,  tho 
tie  of  affection  between  the  mother  country  and  her  off 
spring  was  for  a  time  renewed,  and  the  shadow  on  tho 
dial  which  hastened  towards  the  fatal  hour  was  turned 
1689  backward  by  the  series  of  struggles  in  which  Great 
^g  Britain  and  her  colonies  were  together  engaged  with 
France,  the  long  arm  of  whose  ambition  reaching  from 
Quebec  round  to  the  valley  of  the  Mississippi  threatened, 
or  seemed  to  threaten,  not  only  the  ascendancy  but  tho 
security  of  Englishmen  in  the  IICAV  world,  while  native 
savages  under  French  Catholic  instigation  were  always 
harassing  the  Protestant  settlements  of  New  England. 
The  population  of  French  Canada  compared  with  that 
of  the  English  colonies  was  very  small,  but  all  French 
Canadians  of  military  age  were  fighting  men.  Their 
force  was  wielded  by  the  single  will  of  a  military  gov 
ernor  such  as  Frontenac  or  Montcalm,  and  with  them 
were  the  regular  troops  of  conquering  France.  The 

64 


CHAP.  ii.     REVOLUTION,    INDEPENDENCE,    AND   UNION.  65 

Indian  was  mainly  on  the  side  of  the  Frenchman,  who 
amalgamated  with  him  more  easily  than  the  Englishman, 
nor  did  the  Jesuit  shrink  from  launching  his  savage  con 
vert  with  tomahawk  and  firebrand  on  the  villages  of  the 
heretic.  The  English  colonies  had  no  sufficient  bond 
apart  from  their  common  allegiance  to  the  empire  to 
unite  them  against  a  foe  whose  union  was  complete. 
Besides  their  disputes  with  the  royal  governors  they 
had  quarrels  among  themselves  about  boundaries,  about 
relations  with  the  Indians,  about  shares  of  responsibility 
for  the  cost  of  colonial  wars.  Even  their  commercial 
union  was  imperfect.  It  was  difficult  to  induce  such  of 
them  as  were  remote  from  the  point  of  danger  to  con 
tribute  to  the  common  defence.  An  attempt  was  made 
to  bring  about  a  defensive  union.  It  was  earnestly  sup 
ported  by  Franklin  who  to  his  account  of  the  loss  of  a 
fort  added  a  picture  of  a  rattle-snake  cut  into  thirteen 
pieces'  with  the  motto  "  Join  or  Die."  But  the  plan  when 
framed  pleased  neither  the  colonists,  who  thought  there  was 
too  much  in  it  of  royal  supremacy,  nor  the  crown,  which 
thought  there  was  too  much  in  it  of  independence.  In 
fact  the  colonies  could  not  fully  feel  the  necessity,  so 
long  as  they  were  united  under  the  imperial  government 
and  led  by  its  commanders.  Nor  were  English  colonists 
military  like  the  French,  but  agricultural  and  commer 
cial,  though,  as  the  stormy  waters  witnessed,  they  were 
strong  and  brave.  Wolfe  said  of  his  North  American 
Rangers  that  they  were  the  worst  soldiers  in  the  universe, 
a  censure  which,  however,  must  have  referred  more  to 
lack  of  discipline  than  of  valour  and  was  inapplicable 
to  bush-fighting  with  Indians,  as  the  rout  of  Braddock's 
regulars  and  the  protection  of  their  retreat  by  Washing- 


66  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

ton's  Virginian  Militia  had  shown.  Ships  of  war  the 
colonies  had  none.  Hardly  without  the  aid  of  British 
armies,  fleets,  and  commanders  would  colonial  prowess  have 
prevailed  over  the  warlike  bush  rangers  of  Quebec  with  the 

1744.  armies,  fleets,  and  generals  of  France.  A  colonial  expedi 
tion  took  Louisbourg,  the  Gibraltar  of  North  America, 
without  the  aid  of  British  troops ;  but  the  works  of  Louis 
bourg  were  then  weak,  the  garrison  was  ill-provided  anc 
mutinous,  the  commandant  was  irresolute,  and  when  his 
supplies  were  cut  off  by  a  British  fleet  he  surrendered. 
Otherwise  this  famous  enterprise,  undertaken  in  a  fit  o' 
enthusiasm,  religious  as  well  as  military,  and  led  by 
crusaders  ignorant  of  war,  would  probably  have  failed. 
Better  for  the  colonists  than  British  protection  against 
France,  for  which  they  paid  by  entanglement  in  European 
quarrels,  would  have  been  a  compact  of  colonial  neutral 
ity,  exempting  the  American  colonies  of  European  powers 
from  wars  between  the  imperial  countries.  Such  a  prc- 
ject  had  been  framed  and  even  embraced,  but  it  proved 
abortive.  As  it  was,  New  England  might  have  been 
worsted  in  the  struggle  with  New  France  had  not  the 
protecting  arm  of  Old  England  been  stretched  over  her. 
Though  the  war  was  European,  it  was  in  no  merely 
British  quarrel  that  British  blood  was  poured  out  and 
British  treasure  lavished  on  the  American  field.  Brad- 
dock  may  have  been  arrogant  and  blundering,  but  the  fact 
remains  that  he  and  his  soldiers  were  there  at  England's 
cost  to  defend  her  American  children  against  the  French 
and  their  Indian  allies.  Not  for  Great  Britain  alone,  but 
for  the  British  race  and  for  its  ascendancy  on  this  con 
tinent  the  red  coats  conquered  on  the  heights  of  Abraham 

1759.  and  Wolfe  died. 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,  AND   UNION.  67 

That  colonial  loyalty  was  in  a  great  measure  fear  of 
France  and  that  the  colonists,  as  soon  as  England  had  rid 
them  of  that  fear,  would  break  the  tie,  was  the  surmise  of 
shrewd  and  cynical  observers  at  the  time.  Yet  Americans 
will  hardly  upbraid  the  mother  country  with  blindness  in 
not  foreseeing  that  result.  When  the  question  arose 
whether  Great  Britain  should  retain  Canada  or  take  a 
sugar  island  which  to  herself  would  have  been  more  valu 
able,  Franklin  pressed  on  her  the  retention  of  Canada. 
Assuming  his  advice  to  have  been  sincere  he  must  have 
trusted  colonial  gratitude.  There  was  at  all  events  a  tran 
sient  renewal  of  love.  When  Quebec  fell  the  bonfires  of  1759. 
loyalty  were  lighted.  England  and  Chatham  were  in  all 
colonial  hearts.  If  only  that  happy  moment  could  have 
been  seized  for  parting  in  peace !  If  when  the  British  flag 
was  run  up  on  the  great  stronghold  of  France,  the  mother 
country  could  have  said  to  the  child,  "I  have  done  for 
you  all  that  a  parent  could  do,  I  have  secured  to  you  the 
dominion  of  the  new  world,  you  have  outgrown  my  pro-  . 
tection  and  control,  follow  henceforth  your  own  destiny, 
cultivate  your  magnificent  heritage  and  be  grateful  to  the 
arm  which  helped  to  win  it  for  you ! "  Had  those  unuttered 
words  been  spoken,  how  different  might  have  been  the  his 
tory  of  our  race,  perhaps  to  the  end  of  time  ! 

It  is  needless  and  would  be  painful  to  recount  to  English 
men  the  annals  of  a  quarrel  which  fills  a  too  familiar  page 
in  English  history,  and  wretched  as  it  was  on  both  sides, 
went  nearer  through  its  European  extension  than  even  the 
domination  of  Louis  XIV  or  the  conquests  of  Napoleon 
to  bringing  trie  head  of  England  low  among  the  nations. 
Few  require  to  be  again  told  how  when  England  was 
burdened  by  a  heavy  debt  contracted  in  the  war,  George 


68  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

Grenville  in  an  evil  hour  bethought  him  of  making  the 
colonies  contribute  to  their  own  defence,  while  he  enforced 
at  the  same  time  with  calamitous  industry  the  fiscal  laws 
and  the  restrictions  on  trade ;  how  to  raise  revenue  for  a 
1764.  colonial  army  he  imposed  the  stamp  duty ;  how  the  colo 
nists  resisted  and  Chatham  applauded  their  resistance ; 
how  by  Buckingham  with  Burke  at  his  side  the  stamp 

1766.  duty  was  repealed,  while  with  the  repealing  act  was  un 
happily  coupled,  to  save  imperial  honour,  a  declaration  oi 
the   power    of    Parliament   to   bind    the    colonies   by   ite 
legislation    in   all    cases;    how  peace    and   a   measure    of 
good    feeling   were    thereby   restored ;     how    Townshencl 
usurping  command  of  the  government  during  an  eclipso 
of  Chatham  madly  re-opened  the   fatal  issue  by  the  im- 

1767.  position  of  a  number  of  import  duties;    how  Parliament 
gave    a   careless   assent   to    Towiishend's    proposal ;    hov.r 
colonial   resistance   was   renewed;    how   while    the    other 
duties  were  repealed  pride  and  obstinacy  retained  the  te  i 
duty  as  a  proof  of  power;  how  strife  again  broke  out  and 
ended  only  with  the  destruction  of  the  unity  of  the  British 
race.     Nor  would  it  be  profitable  to  rehearse  arguments 
which  were  mostly  in  the  air,  though  they  had  too  practi 
cal  an  influence  on  the  conduct  of  statesmen  and  of  politi 
cal  assemblies.     A  sovereign  power  there  must  have  been 
somewhere.     Where  could  it  be  but  in  the  Imperial  Parlia 
ment?     Had  not  the  colonists  just  acquiesced  in  an  act 
declaring   the  power  of   Parliament  to  bind   them  in   all 
cases?     Out  of  the  jurisdiction  of  Parliament  they  could 
not  pretend  to  be,  since  they  had  submitted  to  laws  made 
by  Parliament  respecting  navigation,  trade,  naturalization, 
and  other  imperial  matters,  not  to  mention   the   Habeas 
Corpus  Act,  or  the  common  law  which  was  recognized  in 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  69 

the  colonies,  and  must  have  had  for  its  basis  the  legislative 
supremacy  of  the  parliament  of  Great  Britain.  That  there 
was  an  essential  difference  between  internal  and  external 
taxation,  as  Chatham  in  the  interest  of  peace  and  unity 
contended,  few  will  now  maintain.  The  sovereign  power 
must  include  the  power  of  taxation,  and  taxation  is  but  an 
exercise  of  the  legislative  power  in  the  form  of  a  law  enact 
ing  that  the  impost  shall  be  paid.  We  rely  for  our  judg 
ment  respecting  these  questions  mainly  on  Burke.  But 
Burke  though  of  all  rhetoricians  the  most  philosophic  was 
still  a  rhetorician  and  presented  only  one  side  of  a  case. 
Of  this  his  essay  on  the  French  Revolution  is  the  memo 
rable  and  disastrous  proof.  Though  he  goes  deep  into 
everything  he  seldom  goes  to  the  bottom.  You  cannot 
extract  from  him  any  definite  theory  of  the  colonial  rela 
tion,  of  the  authority  which  an  imperial  country  was 
entitled  really  to  exercise  over  colonial  dependencies,  or 
of  the  use  of  such  dependencies  if  authority  really  to  be 
exercised  there  was  none.  Was  Great  Britain  bound  to 
defend  the  colonies  and  were  the  colonies  not  bound, 
unless  they  chose,  to  contribute  to  the  defence?  Was 
each  colonial  legislature  in  the  case  of  a  peril  calling  for 
common  effort  to  be  at  liberty  to  renounce  its  share  of  the 
burden  ?  It  is  said  that  if  England  had  then  done  by  the 
American  colonies  as  she  has  since  done  by  her  other 
colonies,  the  result  would  have  been  equally  happy.  The 
result  is  that  she  bears  the  whole  burden  of  imperial 
defence  and  all  other  expenses  of  the  Empire  while  the 
colonies  lay  protective  duties  on  her  goods.  Of  such  an 
empire  neither  Burke  nor  anyone  else  at  that  time  dreamed. 
They  all,  however  indistinct  their  vision  might  be,  had  in 
their  minds  an  empire  of  real  power  and  solid  gain. 


70  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

Would  Chatham  have  thought  of  allowing  the  colonies  to 
lay  protective  duties  on  British  goods,  he  who  talked  of 
forbidding  them  even  to  make  a  nail  for  a  horseshoe  ? 
Wisdom  spoke,  albeit  in  a  crabbed  way,  by  the  mouth  of 
Dean  Tucker,  on  whose  mind,  Tory  as  he  was,  the  truth 
had  dawned  that  colonial  dependencies  were  of  no  real  use 
commercially,  inasmuch  as  you  might  trade  with  a  colony 
just  as  well  when  it  was  independent,  and  of  less  than  no 
use  politically  when  they  were  in  a  chronic  state  of  smoth 
ered  sedition  and  refused  to  contribute  to  the  defence  of 
the  Empire.  The  Dean  advised,  if  the  colonies  persisted 
in  their  refusal,  to  bid  them  begone  in  peace,  an  invitation 
which  at  that  time  they  would  almost  certainly  have 
declined.  But  the  voice  of  wisdom  was  not  recognized 
even  by  the  philosophic  Burke.  On  the  other  hand  Burke 
was  surely  right  in  rejecting  the  plan  countenanced  by 
Adam  Smith  of  colonial  representation  in  the  Imperial 
Parliament.  The  difficulty  of  distance  would  have  been 
very  great,  that  of  the  appointment  of  representatives  still 
greater,  especially  as  the  House  of  Commons  was  then 
constituted ;  that  of  a  total  want  of  community  of  interest 
between  states  on  opposite  sides  of  the  Atlantic  would  have 
been  the  greatest  of  all.  The  plan  of  a  federal  union  between 
the  American  colonies  and  Great  Britain  floated  as  some 
think  before  the  mind  of  Chatham.  Such  a  union  might 
have  lived  with  Chatham ;  with  Chatham  it  would  have  died. 
At  the  same  time  we  must  recognize  the  natural  senti 
ment  of  empire.  When  Chatham  speaks  with  pride  of 
that  "  ancient  and  most  noble  monarchy  "  which  his  genius 
had  raised  to  the  height  of  glory,  and  with  anguish  of  its 
possible  dismemberment,  his  emotion  is  surely  not  less 
generous  than  any  that  swelled  the  bosom  of  Samuel  or 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  71 

John  Adams,  Patrick  Henry,  or  Thomas  Paine.  It  may 
even  be  said  that  the  determination  of  George  III  to  hold 
the  colonies  at  whatever  cost  of  blood  and  treasure,  at 
whatever  risk  to  his  crown,  was  more  complimentary  to 
them,  if  it  was  less  kind,  than  the  proposal  of  Dean  Tucker 
at  once  to  show  them  the  door.  This  controversy  to 
Americans  is  dead.  For  England  it  will  retain  something 
of  a  living  interest  so  long  as  the  tie  of  colonial  depend 
ence,  though  attenuated,  continues  to  exist  with  difficul 
ties  and  liabilities  reduced  yet  not  annulled. 

That  the  cause  of  the  revolt  was  not  general  oppression 
of  the  colonies  by  the  mother  country  seems  clear.  We 
have  seen  that  when  a  governor  of  New  York  charged  his 
assembly  with  a  tendency  to  independence,  the  assembly 
responded  by  a  vehement  protestation  of  attachment  to 
the  government  under  which  they  lived.  Franklin  de 
clared  that  having  travelled  over  the  whole  country  and 
kept  'Company  with  people  of  all  sorts  he  had  never  heard 
from  any  person,  drunk  or  sober,  the  expression  of  a  wish 
for  separation  or  a  hint  that  such  a  thing  could  be  advan 
tageous  to  America.  John  Adams  said  as  late  as  March, 
1775,  of  the  people  of  Massachusetts  itself,  "that  there 
are  any  that  hunt  after  independence  is  the  greatest  slan 
der  on  the  province."  Jefferson  averred  that  before  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  he  had  never  heard  a  whisper 
of  disposition  to  separate  from  Great  Britain.  Washing 
ton  said  in  October,  1774,  "I  am  well  satisfied  that  no 
such  thing  as  independence  is  desired  by  any  thinking 
man  in  all  North  America ;  on  the  contrary  that  it  is  the 
ardent  wish  of  the  warmest  advocates  for  liberty  that 
peace  and  tranquillity  on  constitutional  grounds  will  be 
restored,  and  the  'horrors  of  civil  discord  prevented." 


72  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

The  New  York  Congress,  in  an  address  to  Washington 
after  his  assumption  of  the  command,  declared  that  the 
fondest  wish  of  every  American  soul  was  an  accommoda 
tion  with  the  mother  country ;  and  Washington  in  his 
reply  recognized  the  re-establishment  of  peace  and  har 
mony  between  the  mother  country  and  the  colonies  as 
the  ultimate  object  of  his  undertaking.  New  Hampshire, 
Pennsylvania,  Virginia,  South  Carolina,  New  Jersey,  spoke 
in  the  same  strain  as  New  York.  Massachusetts,  the  very 
hotbed  of  revolution,  in  her  address  to  the  king,  spoke  of 
the  restoration  of  union  and  harmony  between  Great 
Britain  and  her  colonies  as  indispensable  and  necessary 
to  the  welfare  and  happiness  of  both.  John  Adams  was 
warned  by  his  associates  in  the  movement  at  Philadelphia 
that  if  he  uttered  the  word  independence  he  was  undone, 
for  the  idea  was  as  unpopular  in  Pennsylvania  and  in  all 
the  middle  and  southern  states  as  the  Stamp  Act  itself. 
He  confesses  that  when  he  broached  the  idea  he  was 
avoided  as  a  man  infected  with  leprosy.  Even  years  after 
he  said,  "  For  my  own  part  there  was  not  a  moment 
during  the  revolution  when  I  would  not  have  given  all 
I  possessed  for  a  restoration  to  the  state  of  things  that 
existed  before  the  contest  began,  provided  we  could  have 
a  sufficient  security  for  its  continuance."  If  some  of  these 
professions  were  hollow,  that  only  proves  the  strength  of 
the  general  feeling  which  demanded  the  tribute.  Did  the 
authors  of  the  revolution  aim  at  independence,  or  did 
they  not?  If  they  did  not,  they  could  hardly  have  been 
groaning  under  systematic  oppression ;  nothing  less  than 
which,  moderate  men  would  say,  can  justify  revolution 
and  civil  war.  If  they  did,  the  British  government  ap 
parently  may  claim  to  be  absolved  so  far  as  they  are 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  73 

concerned,  since  what  they  sought  was  a  thing  which  by 
their  own  showing  the  vast  majority  of  their  own  people 
abhorred,  as  well  as  a  thing  which  by  its  recognized  duty 
the  British  government  was  bound  to  refuse.  In  fact  the 
panegyrical  historians  stand  not  for  two  pages  on  the 
same  foot ;  in  one  page  they  applaud  the  patriot  for  aim 
ing  at  independence,  in  the  next  they  represent  constitu 
tional  redress  as  his  sole  aim. 

Separation,  again  be  it  said,  was  inevitable.  It  was  too 
likely  that,  the  vision  of  statesmanship  being  clouded  as 
it  was  respecting  the  relation  of  colonies  to  the  mother 
country,  the  separation  would  be  angry  and  violent.  Still 
it  might  conceivably  have  been  amicable,  and  that  dark 
page  might  possibly  have  been  torn  from  the  book  of 
destiny.  Woe,  we  must  say,  to  them  by  whom  the  of 
fence  came  and  through  whose  immediate  agency,  cul 
pable  '  in  itself,  the  two  great  families  of  our  race  were 
made  and  to  a  deplorable  extent  have  remained  enemies 
instead  of  being  friends,  brethren,  and  fellow-workers  in 
the  advancement  of  their  common  civilization.  Woe  to 
the  arbitrary  and  bigoted  king  whose  best  excuse  is  that 
he  had  not  made  himself  a  ruler  instead  of  being  what 
nature  intended  him  to  be,  a  ploughman.  Woe  to  Gren- 
ville,  who  though  not  wicked  or  really  bent  on  depriving 
the  colonies  of  their  rights,  but  on  the  contrary  most 
anxious  after  his  fashion  to  promote  their  interests,  was 
narrow,  pedantic,  overbearing,  possessed  with  extravagant 
ideas  of  the  authority  of  Parliament,  and  un statesmanlike 
enough  to  insist  on  doing  because  it  was  technically  law 
ful  that  which  the  sagacity  of  Walpole  had  on  the  ground 
of  practical  expediency  refused  to  do.  Woe  above  all  to 


74  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

Charles  Townshend,  who,  with  his  vain  brilliancy  and  his 
champagne  speeches,  repeated  in  the  face  of  recent  and  des 
cisive  experience  the  perilous  experiment  and  recklessly 
renewed  the  quarrel.  Woe  to  Lord  North,  and  all  the 
more  because  in  stooping  to  do  the  will  of  the  king  he 
was  sinning  against  the  light  of  good  nature  and  good 
sense  in  himself.  Woe  even  to  Mansfield,  whose  supremely 
legal  intellect  too  ably  upheld  the  letter  of  the  law  against 
policy  and  the  right.  Woe  to  the  Parliament  —  a  parlia 
ment  be  it  ever  remembered  of  rotten  boroughs  and  of 
nominees  not  of  the  nation  —  which  carelessly  or  inso 
lently  supported  the  evil  resolution  of  the  ministry  and 
the  court.  Woe  to  the  Tory  squires  who  shouted  for  the 
war,  to  the  Tory  parsons  who  preached  for  it,  and  to  the 
Tory  bishops  who  voted  for  it  in  the  House  of  Lords. 
Woe  to  the  pamphleteers  of  prerogative,  such  as  Johnson, 
whose  vituperative  violence  added  fuel  to  the  flame.  But 
woe  also  to  the  agitators  at  Boston,  who,  with  the  design 
of  independence  unavowed  and  of  which  they  themselves 
were  perhaps  but  half  conscious,  did  their  utmost  to  push 
the  quarrel  to  extremity  and  to  quench  the  hope  of 
reconciliation.  Woe  to  the  preachers  of  Boston,  who 
whether  from  an  exaggerated  dread  of  prelacy  or  to  win 
the  favour  of  the  people  made  themselves  the  trumpeters 
of  discord  and  perverted  the  gospel  into  a  message  of 
civil  war.  Woe  to  contraband  traders  if  there  were  any, 
who  sought  in  fratricidal  strife  relief  from  trade  restric 
tions  ;  to  debtors  if  there  were  any,  who  sought  in  it  a 
sponge  for  debt.  Woe  to  all  on  either  side  who  under 
the  influence  of  passion,  interest,  or  selfish  ambition 
fomented  the  quarrel  which  rent  asunder  the  English 
race. 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND    UNION.  75 

Of  the  fomenters  of  the  quarrel  in  New  England  the 
chief  was  Samuel  Adams,  who,  we  can  scarcely  doubt, 
whatever  might  be  his  professions,  had  set  his  heart  on  the 
achievement  of  independence ;  had  been  laying  his  plans 
and  enlisting  his  associates,  such  as  the  wealthy  Hancock 
and  the  impetuous  Otis,  for  that  purpose ;  had  welcomed 
rather  than  dreaded  the  dispute,  and  preferred  the  mortal 
issue  to  a  reconciliation.  This  man  had  failed  in  business 
as  a  maltster  and  as  a  tax  collector,  but  he  had  succeeded 
as  a  political  agitator  and  has  found  a  shrine  in  American 
history  as  a  patriot  saint.  Though  an  enthusiast,  he  was 
not  wanting  in  the  astuteness  of  the  politician.  The 
latest  of  his  American  biographers  cannot  help  surmising 
that  his  Puritan  conscience  must  have  felt  a  twinge  when 
in  the  very  time  at  which  he  had  devoted  himself  body 
and  soul  to  breaking  the  link  that  bound  America  to  Eng 
land,  he  was  coining  for  this  or  that  body  phrases  full  of 
reverence  for  the  king  and  rejecting  the  thought  of  in 
dependence.  He  had  a  paternal  feud  with  Hutchinson, 
afterwards  Governor  of  Massachusetts,  a  man  whose  repu 
tation  long  lay  buried  under  patriot  vituperation,  but  who 
is  now  admitted  by  fair-minded  writers  to  have  been  him 
self  a  patriot,  taking  the  line  opposite  to  that  of  Samuel 
Adams,  and  seeking  to  the  utmost  of  his  power  peace  with 
justice. 

The  chief  fomenter  of  the  quarrel  in  the  South,  not  less 
glorified  than  Samuel  Adams,  was  Patrick  Henry.  This 
man  also  had  tried  various  ways  of  earning  a  livelihood, 
and  had  failed  in  all.  He  was  a  bankrupt  at  twenty-three, 
and  lounged  in  thriftless  idleness,  till  he  found  that 
though  he  could  not  live  by  industry,  he  could  live  by 
his  eloquent  tongue.  The  circle  in  which  as  a  Virginian 


76  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP 

not  of  the  highest  class  he  formed  his  statesmanship  igj 
described  by  an  American  biographer  as  "  having  com 
prised  an  occasional  clergyman,  pedagogue,  or  legislator  , 
small  planters,  and  small  traders;  sportsmen,  loafers, 
slaves  and  the  drivers  of  slaves,  and  more  than  all  this  the; 
bucolic  sons  of  old  Virginia,  the  good-natured,  illiterate, 
thriftless  Caucasian  consumers  of  tobacco  and  whiskey, 
who  cordially  consenting  that  all  the  hard  work  should  be 
done  by  the  children  of  Ham,  were  thus  left  free  to  com 
mune  together  in  endless  debate  in  the  tavern  porch,  or 
on  the  shady  side  of  the  country  store."  In  Virginia 
admission  to  the  legal  profession  might  be  gained  without 
laborious  study  of  the  law.  Henry's  first  exploit  as  t, 
barrister  was  a  successful  defence  of  the  spoliation  of  the; 
clergy,  an  unpopular  order,  by  an  appeal  to  public  passion 
against  legal  right.  Civil  discord  brought  him  at  onco 
1765.  to  the  front.  His  famous  speech  against  the  tyranny  of 
George  III  is  often  recited :  —  "  Is  life  so  dear,  or  peaco 
so  sweet,  as  to  be  purchased  at  the  price  of  chains  and 
slavery?  Forbid  it,  Almighty  God.  I  know  not  whaL 
course  others  may  take,  but  as  for  me,  give  me  liberty 
or  give  me  death."  When  he  said,  "  Is  life  so  dear,  or 
peace  so  sweet,  as  to  be  purchased  at  the  price  of  chains 
and  slavery,"  he  stood,  as  an  eyewitness  has  told  us,  in  the, 
attitude  of  a  condemned  galley  slave,  loaded  with  fetters, 
awaiting  his  doom  ;  his  form  was  bowed,  his  wrists  were 
crossed,  his  manacles  were  almost  visible  as  he  stood  like 
an  embodiment  of  helplessness  and  agony.  After  a 
solemn  pause  he  raised  his  eyes  and  chained  hands 
towards  heaven,  and  prayed  in  words  and  tones  that 
thrilled  every  heart,  "Forbid  it,  Almighty  God."  Men 
tally  struggling  with  the  tyranny,  he  looked,  the  same 


IL  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,  AND   UNION.  77 

witness  tells  us,  like  "  Laocoon  in  a  death  struggle  with 
the  coiling  serpents."  "  The  sound  of  his  voice  was  like 
that  of  a  Spartan  paean  on  the  field  of  Platsea,  and  as  each 
syllable  of  the  word  4  Liberty '  echoed  through  the  build 
ing  his  fetters  were  shivered,  his  arms  were  pulled  apart, 
and  the  links  of  his  chain  were  scattered  to  the  winds. 
He  stood  like  a  Roman  Senator  defying  Csesar,  while  the 
unconquerable  spirit  of  Cato  of  Utica  flashed  from  every 
feature,  and  he  closed  the  grand  appeal  with  the  solemn 
words,  4  Or  give  me  death,'  which  sounded  with  the  awful 
cadence  of  a  hero's  dirge,  fearless  of  death,  and  victorious 
in  death ;  and  he  suited  the  action  to  the  word  t>y  a  blow 
upon  the  left  breast  with  the  right  hand,  which  seemed  to 
drive  the  dagger  to  the  patriot's  heart." 

It  is  no  wonder  that  Patrick  Henry  could  so  vividly 
portray  to  his  audience  the  attitude  of  a  slave.  From  the 
beginning  to  the  end  of  his  life  he  was  a  slaveholder,  he 
bought  slaves,  he  sold  slaves,  and  by  his  will,  with  his 
cattle,  he  bequeathed  slaves.  A  eulogist  says  of  him  that 
he  could  buy  or  sell  a  horse  or  a  negro  as  well  as  anybody. 
That  he  was  in  some  degree  conscious  of  the  inconsist 
ency  does  not  alter  the  fact.  Other  patriot  orators  be 
sides  Patrick  Henry,  when  they  lavished  the  terms  slave 
and  slavery  in  their  revolutionary  harangues,  might  have 
reflected  that  they  had  only  to  look  round  them  in  order 
to  see  what  real  slaves  and  slavery  were. 

Massachusetts,  where  the  fire  broke  out,  was  in  a  specially 
inflammable  state.  John  Adams  in  a  paper  embodied  in 
his  diary  describes  the  multitude  of  taverns  swarming  with 
busy  politicians,  who  he  says  were  more  in  number  than 
the  people  who  attended  to  their  own  business.  The 
constitutional  sensitiveness  and  contentiousness  called 


78  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAK 

forth  by  the  dispute  about  the  Stamp  Act  had  upon  the 
repeal  of  that  act  calmed  down  but  had  not  died  out.  By 
this  time  the  legal  profession  was  fully  fledged.  Lawyers 
had  taken  the  lead  in  political  life  and  they  carried  into 
it  the  spirit  of  litigation.  A  great  many  law  suits  were 
going  on.  Even  the  discourses  on  polemical  theology 
which  the  people  constantly  heard  from  the  pulpit  would 
tend  to  make  them  argumentative  and  contentious.  Pat 
riotism  of  the  classical  type  was  fashionable  in  England, 
and  the  fashion  had  spread  to  the  colony.  Brutus  and 
Cassius  were  the  model  patriots  of  the  hour ;  rhetoric  was 
always  conjuring  with  their  names.  Wilkesbarre,  the 
name  of  a  town  in  Pennsylvania,  is  a  quaint  memorial  of 
the  settlers'  reverence  for  those  two  great  tribunes  of  the 
people,  Wilkes  and  Barre',  on  the  moral  glories  of  the  first 
of  whom  it  is  needless  to  dwell ;  while  the  second,  the 
author  of  a  famous  stroke  of  rhetoric  against  the  false 
claim  of  the  mother  country  to  colonial  gratitude,  made 
his  way  through  a  career  of  fiery  patriotism  to  the  Clerk 
ship  of  the  Pells,  one  of  the  fattest  sinecures  of  corruption. 
The  Puritan  clergy  were  angered  by  the  concession  of 
legal  toleration  to  Roman  Catholicism  in  Quebec  and  were 
always  in  dread  of  prelatic  invasion.  There  was  a  daily 
source  of  irritation  in  the  tightened  pressure  of  commercial 
restrictions  and  the  demeanour  of  royal  officers  engaged  in 
enforcing  them.  The  disputes  about  fixed  salaries  for 
governors  and  other  crown  officers  were  also  in  an  angry 
state.  The  presence  of  a  soldiery,  alien  to  a  city  of 
Puritan  merchants  like  Boston,  filled  up  the  measure  of 
exasperation,  for  such  a  garrison  was  sure  to  bear  itself 
haughtily  towards  the  people. 

When  fortune  frowns  everything  goes  wrong.     Of  all 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  79 

the  disasters  the  greatest  was  the  eclipse  of  Chatham  which 
left  the  political  firmament  to  Townshend's  malignant  star. 
Next  to  this  was  the  social  catastrophe  of  Franklin,  the  one 
man  who  being  revered  in  England  as  well  as  in  America 
might  have  mediated  writh  some  chance  of  success,  and 
to  whose  advice  George  Grenville  had  in  fact  resorted. 
The  private  letters  of  Governor  Hutchinson  were  betrayed 
into  his  hands.  He  must  have  known  and  he  did  know 
that  they  had  been  stolen,  or  at  least  improperly  obtained, 
and  that  he  had  no  right  to  use  them.  When  he  sent 
them  to  Boston  under  the  formal  seal  of  confidence,  he  can 
hardly  have  failed  to  surmise  that  by  the  men  to  whom  he 
sent  them  that  seal  would  be  broken.  His  plea  that  he 
acted  in  the  interest  of  peace,  hoping  to  convince  his  fel 
low  colonists  that  evil  counsels  came  not  from  England 
but  from  their  own  quarter,  cannot  be  seriously  enter 
tained.  Its  hollowness  confirms  his  condemnation.  That 
he  believed  himself  to  be  doing  good  may  be  admitted,  it 
cannot  be  admitted  that  he  believed  himself  to  be  doing 
right.  English  gentlemen  were  licentious  and  some  of 
them  were  politically  corrupt,  but  they  had  a  keen  sense 
of  social  honour.  To  complete  the  disaster,  the  duty  of 
dealing  with  the  case  fell  not  to  the  lot  of  a  man  of  char 
acter  and  dignity  but  of  Wedderburn,  a  low  adventurer, 
branded  at  his  death  by  the  king  himself  as  the  greatest 
scoundrel  in  the  realm,  whose  brutalities  made  of  Franklin 
a  deadly  foe.  Another  piece  of  ill  luck  was  the  Opposition 
leadership  of  Fox,  a  debauchee  in  politics  as  in  private  life, 
whose  reckless  violence  and  revolting  displays  of  sympathy 
with  the  Americans  even  when  they  had  France  for  an  ally, 
could  only  confirm  the  obstinacy  of  the  king  and  his  min 
isters  and  identify  their  cause  in  the  eyes  of  the  nation 


80  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

with  that  of  the  honour  of  the  country.  Sir  Gilbert  Elliot 
was  probably  right  in  saying  that  North  might  have  fallen 
long  before  if  he  had  not  been  propped  by  the  unpatriotic 
behaviour  of  Fox.  Burke,  as  Fox's  partner,  hardly  escapes 
a  share  of  the  same  censure.  Fox  behaved  in  the  same 
way  at  the  outbreak  of  the  French  Revolution. 

The  restrictions  upon  colonial  trade  and  manufactures 
were  a  cause  for  the  most  reasonable  discontent.  The 
restrictions  on  trade  might  be  excused  by  the  dominant 
fallacies  of  a  protectionist  era  and  palliated  by  the  com 
mercial  privileges  and  bounties  which  the  colonies  enjoyed. 
Those  on  manufactures  were  without  palliation  or  excuse, 
imposed  solely  in  the  interest  of  the  selfish  manufacture]1 
at  home.  These  grievances,  if  redress  had  been  obstinately 
refused,  would  have  justified  revolt.  But  they  are  not  pui; 
forward  as  a  ground  of  revolt  in  the  American  Declaration 
of  Independence.  The  Stamp  Act  having  been  repealed, 
all  the  duties  except  that  on  tea  having  been  removed,  and 
a  pledge  against  their  re-imposition  having  been  given,  the 
tea  duty  was  the  sole  remaining  issue.  Was  this  a  suffi 
cient  reason  for  overthrowing  a  government  under  which 
all  admitted  that  general  liberty  was  enjoyed,  for  shatter 
ing  an  empire  of  the  greatness  of  which  all  professed  to  bo 
proud,  and  for  bringing  on  a  country  the  havoc,  moral  as 
well  as  material,  of  civil  war?  It  is  true  that  in  the  case 
of  the  tea  duty,  as  in  that  of  Hampden's  assessment  to  ship 
money,  what  was  to  be  considered  was  the  principle,  not 
the  amount.  But  ship  money  was  not  merely  a  wrongful 
impost,  it  was  the  entering  wedge  of  unparliamentary  taxa 
tion  destined  to  furnish  the  means  of  a  system  of  govern 
ment  in  church  and  state  fatal  to  the  political  liberties  and 
to  the  spiritual  life  of  the  nation.  Not  Grenville,  not  even 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,  AND   UNION.  81 

Townshend,  not  George  III  himself  had  conceived  any  such 
design  ;  though  the  arbitrary  tendencies  of  the  king  at  least 
were  soon  called  forth  by  the  conflict.  There  seems  to  be 
no  reason  for  believing  that  either  Grenville's  or  Town- 
shend's  policy  was  originally  inspired  by  the  king.  Nor 
was  there  ever  a  man  less  likely  to  play  Strafford  than 
Lord  North.  Would  it  not  have  been  right  before  drawing 
the  fratricidal  sword  to  be  sure  that  no  hope  of  peaceful 
redress  was  left  ?  Why  should  not  the  tea  duty  have  been 
repealed  as  the  other  duties  and  the  Stamp  Act  had  been 
repealed?  Its  retention  was  understood  in  America  to 
have  been  carried  in  the  cabinet  by  a  bare  majority.  A 
circular  from  the  Home  Secretary  assured  the  colonies  that 
the  duties  would  not  be  re-imposed,  and  if  the  ground 
assigned  was  that  of  mere  commercial  expediency  and  not 
that  of  constitutional  principle,  the  assurance  was  not  the 
less  practically  valid.  Colonial  right  had  powerful  advo 
cates' in  Parliament.  It  had  Rockingham  with  Burke  at 
his  side.  It  had  Chatham  whenever  he  should  emerge 
from  the  cloud.  British  merchants  had  thronged  the 
lobbies  of  the  House  of  Commons  on  the  night  of  the  repeal 
of  the  Stamp  Act  and  hailed  Conway,  who  moved  the 
repeal,  as  a  delivering  angel.  But  what  those  who  man 
aged  the  populace  of  Boston  at  heart  desired  was  not  con 
stitutional  redress,  it  was  independence.  On  the  passing 
of  the  Stamp  Act,  among  other  excesses  the  Stamp  Office 
at  Boston  was  levelled,  the  house  of  the  stamp  distributor 
was  wrecked,  and  he  was  compelled  by  the  mob  to  resign 
his  office  and  to  swear  beneath  the  tree  upon  which  his 
effigy  was  hanged  never  to  resume  his  post ;  the  houses  of 
two  officials  connected  with  the  Admiralty  Court  of  the 
Custom  House  were  rifled,  the  records  of  the  Admiralty 


82  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

Court  burnt;  the  mansion  of  Lieutenant  Governor  Hutch- 
inson  was  destroyed,  his  plate,  his  furniture,  his  pictures, 
and  his  fine  library  were  plundered  and  burnt,  and  the 
owner  scarcely  escaped  with  his  life.  On  the  passing  of 
the  tea  duty  outrage  was  renewed.  The  custom  house 
officers  were  assailed  by  parties  armed  with  bludgeons  and 
compelled  to  fly,  officers  were  tarred  and  feathered,  com 
missioners  were  hung  in  effigy.  The  "  Tories,"  as  the 
friends  of  government  were  nicknamed,  were  everywhere 
pursued  with  insult  by  the  Patriot  party  who  borrowed 
from  the  party  of  the  English  Revolution  the  honoured 
name  of  Whigs.  A  reign  of  terror  was  directed  against  all 
the  ministers  of  the  law;  merchants  who  had  imported 
goods  from  England  were  compelled  by  the  populace  to 
give  them  up  to  be  destroyed  or  to  be  re-shipped.  One 
who  sold  English  goods  was  stoned  through  the  streets. 
Sedition  was  preached  from  the  popular  pulpit.  Under 
extraordinary  provocation  a  party  of  soldiers  fired,  killing 
five  rioters  and  wounding  six.  This  was  the  "  Boston 
Massacre,"  celebrated  by  mourning  services  in  chapels 
hung  with  crape.  Praise  is  claimed  for  the  citizens  because 
they  forbore  to  hang  the  soldiers.  But  had  they  hanged  a 
soldier,  it  was  clear  that  to  avenge  his  blood  the  last  pow 
der  of  the  empire  must  have  been  burned ;  and  John 
Adams  showed  not  less  of  policy  than  of  chivalry  in 
appearing  for  the  defence.  Presently  a  revenue  cutter 
was  fired,  after  shooting  and  badly  wounding  the  com- 
1773.  mander.  At  last  came  the  "  Boston  Tea  Party  "  in  which 
a  cargo  of  tea,  the  property  of  merchants  trading  under 
the  imperial  flag,  was  thrown  into  the  bay.  A  government 
thus  bearded  and  insulted  has  its  choice  between  abdica 
tion  and  repression.  In  this  case  abdication  would  have 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  83 

been  the  wiser  course,  but  repression  was  the  more  natural. 
Americans  at  the  present  day  would  not  applaud  violence 
as  their  historians  applaud  the  "  Boston  Tea  Party."  If 
the  temper  of  the  English  Tory  was  tyrannical,  neither 
that  of  the  New  England  Puritan  nor  that  of  the  Virgin 
ian  slaveholder  was  mild. 

In  what  order  and  degree  the  various  causes  of  the 
catastrophe  for  which  the  government  or  the  mother 
country  was  responsible  —  resentment  at  illegal  taxation, 
soreness  under  commercial  restraints,  anger  aroused  by 
violent  measures  of  repression,  the  galling  presence  of  an 
unwelcome  soldiery,  and  imperial  arrogance  —  may  have 
combined  with  republican  aspiration  on  the  part  of 
colonial  leaders  and  the  spread  of  a  revolutionary  spirit,  it 
is  impossible  to  say.  All  that  can  be  said  is  that  the 
catastrophe  was  sure  to  come  and  sure  to  be  disastrous. 

The  measures  of  repression,  in  any  view,  deserve  the 
censure  which  has  been  passed  on  them.  They  were 
passionate,  indiscriminate,  and  insulting ;  bolts  of  blind 
wrath  launched  across  the  Atlantic  by  men  imperfectly 
informed  as  to  the  situation  and  ignorant  of  the  character 
of  the  people,  as  transoceanic  rulers  must  always  be.  By 
closing  the  port  of  Boston  scores  of  traders  faithful  to  the 
government  were  struck.  By  the  abrogation  of  the  char 
ter  of  Massachusetts  every  colony  was  made  to  feel  its 
chartered  rights  imperilled.  Worst  of  all  was  the  revival  1774 
of  a  law  passed  in  the  hateful  reign  of  Henry  VIII, 
under  which  subjects  accused  of  treason  anywhere  could 
be  transported  to  England  for  trial.  This  not  only 
threatened  all  colonists  with  the  loss  of  safeguards  for 
personal  liberty  but  outraged  their  self-respect.  Shoot 
people  if  you  must,  but  do  not  hurt  their  feelings.  II 


84  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

there  was  to  be  repression  at  all,  troops  enough  should  have 
been  sent,  and  the  law  should  have  been  enforced  against 
its  violators  at  Boston  without  inflicting  penalties  on  the 
innocent  or  menacing  colonial  liberties  in  general.  How 
ever,  no  repression  could  have  been  final ;  its  temporary 
success  would  have  been  the  beginning  not  the  end  of  woes. 
In  entering  on  his  attempt  at  coercion  the  King  was 
assured  that  there  was  a  strong  party  in  the  colonies  on 
his  side.  There  was  without  doubt  a  party  opposed  to  revo 
lution,  and  at  the  outset  it  included  a  large  portion  of  the 
wealth  and  intelligence  and  probably  a  large  majority  of 
the  entire  people.  But  the  adherence  of  much  of  it 
to  the  crown  was  rather  passive  than  enthusiastic,  the 
commercial  Quaker  of  Philadelphia  desiring  not  to  fight 
on  either  side  but  to  be  at  peace.  It  was  unorganized, 
and  when  the  royal  governors  had  been  expelled  it  was 
without  leaders.  Still  in  the  struggle  which  ensued  as 
many  as  twenty-five  thousand  loyalists  at  the  lowest  com 
putation,  according  to  the  best  authority,  were  in  arms  for 
the  crown,  a  number  sufficient  to  give  the  conflict  the 
character  of  a  civil  war  between  the  parties  in  America  as 
well  as  between  the  British  and  American  sections  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  race.  By  the  unwise  violence  of  the  king's  min 
isters,  and  afterwards  by  the  blunders  of  his  commanders 
and  the  excesses  of  his  mercenary  troops,  the  numbers  of 
his  party  were  much  reduced.  The  military  obstacles 
were  great.  The  colonies  were  three  thousand  miles  off, 
which  in  those  days  made  supply,  communication,  and  the 
direction  of  operations  from  a  centre  very  difficult.  They 
extended  from  north  to  south  along  nine  hundred  miles  of 
country,  woody  for  the  most  part  and  tangled,  unfavour 
able  to  regulars,  favourable  to  a  sharp-shooting  militia. 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  85 

Those  who  said  that  the  American  militia  would  not  stand 
before  regulars  had  ground  for  what  they  said.  In  the 
open  field  the  regulars  won,  generally  with  ease,  but  most 
of  the  fighting  was  not  in  open  field,  it  was  in  wooded 
country,  and  the  Americans  were  excellent  marksmen. 
The  king  had  no  general.  Wolfe  and  Clive  were  gone, 
Moore  was  a  boy,  Wellington  a  child,  and  India  claimed 
Eyre  Coote.  Cornwallis  was  energetic  and  enterprising, 
he  reaped  laurels  afterwards  in  India.  Had  he  or  Sir 
Guy  Carleton  commanded  in  chief  there  might  have  been 
a  different  tale  to  tell.  Howe,  who  did  command  in  chief, 
though  brave  was  torpid ;  probably  he  was  not  only  torpid 
but  half-hearted.  As  a  member  of  parliament  he  had 
pledged  himself  to  his  constituents  not  to  fight  against 
the  Americans,  and  he  must  have  been  fettered  by  that 
pledge.  He  was  inspired  also,  it  may  be  surmised,  with 
the  spcret  misgivings  of  North,  whose  conscience  was  all 
the  time  accusing  him,  and  who  sent  forth  his  commander 
with  a  sword  in  one  hand  and  the  olive  branch  in  the 
other,  to  the  detriment  alike  of  the  olive  branch  and  the 
sword.  Nor  had  the  king  a  war  minister.  The  place  of 
Chatham  was  filled  by  the  narrow  mind  and  bad  temper 
of  Lord  George  Germaine.  Without  a  general  or  a  war 
minister,  the  king  was  also  without  an  army.  Unable  to 
raise  soldiers  enough  in  England  he  had  to  buy  Hessians, 
who,  though  good  troops,  well-commanded,  and  not  devoid 
of  a  certain  sympathy  with  the  cause  of  a  king  against 
rebels,  were  foreigners  torn  by  sordid  masters  from  their 
homes,  and,  as  aliens  and  hirelings,  hateful  to  the  people 
whose  homes  they  were  sent  to  destroy.  Such  a  necessity, 
ignominious  in  any  war,  worse  than  ignominious  in  a  war 
with  his  own  subjects,  ought  to  have  shown  him  that 


86  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

though  the  pride  of  the  nation  might  be  stung  by  Boston- 
ian  insult  and  its  pugnacity  aroused,  the  object  for  which 
he  fought  was  not  truly  national  nor  was  the  heart  of  the 
nation  with  him.  Never,  not  even  under  Newcastle,  did 
England  make  a  worse  show  in  the  field.  The  court  had 
also  to  contend  with  an  opposition  in  parliament,  weak 
at  first  in  numbers  but  sure  to  be  swelled  by  every  reverse, 
and  embittered  enough  by  faction  to  strike  at  the  ministry 
even  through  the  honour  of  the  country.  It  might  have 
been  known,  too,  that  France  and  the  other  European 
enemies  of  England  were  watching  the  growing  trouble 
with  eager  eyes.  Yet  events  proved  that  success  in  the 
war,  though  unlikely,  was  not  impossible.  That  which 
was  impossible  was  to  continue  to  rule  thirteen  British 
communities  subjugated  by  arms  on  the  other  side  of  the 
Atlantic.  The  forces  of  one  part  of  the  empire  would 
have  been  forever  expended  in  holding  down  the  other 
part.  In  this,  to  say  nothing  of  the  colonists,  the  people 
of  Great  Britain  would  never  have  acquiesced.  Had  the 
colonies  been  really  dependencies  and  the  king  absolute 
he  might,  like  a  Spanish  or  French  despot,  have  sent  out 
a  viceroy  with  sufficient  power.  But  the  colonies  being 
free  and  British  government  having  become  parliamen 
tary,  dominion  was  at  an  end. 

War  evidently  impending,  the  colonies  obeyed  a  mani 
fest  necessity  in  federating  for  the   purposes   of   mutual 
defence.     Thus  the  American  Federation  was  born  in  the 
same  way  as  the  Achaean  League,  the  Swiss  Bund,  and  the 
1774    United  Netherlands.     The  powers  which  provincial  jeal- 
17°5    ousy  would  allow  the  Congress  under  the  articles  of  con 
federation  were  insufficient  even  for  the    limited   object, 
since  Congress  had    no    authority  itself   to   levy  men    or 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  87 

impose  taxes,  but  could  only  address  requisitions  to  the 
several  colonies  without  the  means  of  enforcement.  The 
voting  was  by  states,  and  the  assent  of  nine  states  was 
required,  so  that  five  states  could  paralyze  action.  The 
Federation  in  fact  was  little  more  than  a  league.  Con 
gress,  however,  assumed  in  a  feeble  way  the  character  of  a 
national  government.  It  raised  a  continental  army  with 
officers  bearing  its  commission  and  wearing  its  uniform  of 
blue  and  buff.  In  time  it  unfurled  its  flag,  the  stars  and 
stripes,  the  harbinger  of  the  tricolour.  Advice  was  given 
by  it  to  the  several  colonies  to  erect  themselves  into  states 
on  a  republican  footing.  This  advice  they  easily  followed. 
Already  their  constitutions  were  essentially  republican, 
already  their  political  spirit  was  essentially  republican, 
and  they  had  only,  where  it  was  needed,  to  strike  off  the 
monarchical  apex  of  the  structure  and  substitute  an  elec 
tive  governor  for  the  governor  sent  out  by  the  crown.  In 
a  hall  at  Philadelphia,  rendered  sacred  to  all  American 
hearts  by  the  act,  was  signed  a  declaration  of  independence; 
it  was  signed  with  sorrow  and  reluctance  at  the  time  even 
by  some  of  those  who  had  been  foremost  in  the  constitu 
tional  fray,  though  descent  from  one  of  those  who  sub 
scribed  it  is  now  a  title  of  nobility.  Colonial  resolution 
had  been  screwed  to  the  sticking  point  by  Tom  Paine,  the 
stormy  petrel  of  three  countries,  with  his  pamphlet  "  Com 
mon  Sense,"  issued  in  the  nick  of  time,  coarsely  but  forci 
bly  written  and  well  spiced  with  rhetoric  about  the  "  royal 
brute."  The  Declaration  of  Independence,  one  of  the  1776. 
most  famous  documents  in  the  muniment  room  of  history, 
bespeaks  the  hand  of  the  philosophic  Jefferson.  It  opens 
with  sweeping  aphorisms  about  the  natural  rights  of  man 
at  which  political  science  now  smiles,  and  which,  as  Amer- 


88  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

ican  abolitionists  did  not  fail  to  point  out  at  a  later  day, 
might  seem  strange  when  framed  for  slave-holding  com 
munities  by  a  publicist  who  himself  held  slaves.  It  pro 
ceeds  to  recount  in  a  highly  rhetorical  strain  all  the  offen 
sive  acts  of  George  III  and  his  government,  designating 
them  as  "  a  long  train  of  abuses  and  usurpations  pursuing 
invariably  the  same  object  and  evincing  a  design  to  reduce 
the  colonists  under  absolute  despotism  "  and  asserting  that 
"  they  all  had  as  their  direct  object  the  establishment  of  an 
absolute  tyranny "  -  propositions  which  history  cannot 
accept.  It  blinks  the  fact  that  many  of  the  acts,  styled 
steps  of  usurpation,  were  measures  of  repression  which 
however  unwise  or  excessive  had  been  provoked  by  popu 
lar  outrage.  It  speaks  of  the  patient  sufferings  of  colonists 
who  had  sacked  the  houses  and  maltreated  the  persons  of 
the  king's  officers,  burnt  his  revenue  cutter,  and  flung  the 
goods  of  merchants  trading  under  his  flag  into  the  sea. 
One  count  in  the  indictment  is  the  Act  declaring  the  Brit 
ish  Parliament  invested  with  power  to  legislate  for  the  col 
onies  in  all  cases.  Yet  in  this  Act,  framed  by  Rockingham 
and  Burke  as  a  pendant  to  the  repeal  of  the  Stamp  Act 
the  colonists  had  certainly  acquiesced.  The  archives  of 
English  Puritanism  it  seems  had  been  searched  for  a  pre 
cedent,  and  the  precedent  adopted  was  probably  the  Grand 
Remonstrance.  But  the  Grand  Remonstrance  was  founded 
on  fact,  since  the  violent  acts  of  Charles  I,  Strafford,  and 
Laud  were  really  steps  in  the  execution  of  a  plan  for  the 
establishment  of  arbitrary  government.  The  author  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  proposed  to  insert  a  clause 
denouncing  George  III  as  responsible  for  the  slave  trade, 
and  accusing  him  of  "thereby  waging  cruel  war  against 
human  nature  itself,  violating  its  most  sacred  rights  of  life 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  89 

and  liberty  in  the  persons  of  a  distant  people  who  never 
offended  him,  captivating  them  and  carrying  them  into 
slavery  in  another  hemisphere,  or  to  more  miserable  death 
in  the  transportation  thither."  "  This  piratical  warfare," 
so  ran  the  clause,  "  the  opprobrium  of  Infidel  Powers,  is 
the  warfare  of  the  Christian  King  of  Great  Britain."  But 
this  was  too  much  not  only  for  the  slave-owners  of  Vir 
ginia  but  for  the  slave-traders  of  New  England.  Had 
George  III  framed  the  Virginian  or  Carolinian  slave  codes  ? 
Such  checks  as  had  been  put  by  Virginia  or  as  she  had 
proposed  to  put  on  the  importation  of  slaves  are  admitted 
by  candid  American  historians  to  have  had  not  a  moral 
but  an  economical  motive.  Jefferson  himself,  though  an 
opponent  and  doubtless  a  sincere  opponent  of  slavery, 
never  emancipated  his  own  slaves. 

The  war  opened  at  Boston,  where  General  Gage,  now 
its  military  governor,  lay  with  a  small  army  of  occupation 
and  repression,  and  it  opened  in  a  way  ominous  of  the 
final  result  and  significant  of  the  means  by  which  the 
result  was  to  be  brought  about.  Gage  sent  out  a  detach-  April 
ment  to  seize  rebel  stores  at  Lexington.  The  militia  of  1775. 
the  country,  called  Minute  Men  because  they  were  always 
to  be  in  readiness,  excellent  sharp-shooters,  swarmed  out, 
surrounded  the  detachment,  and  forced  it  to  fall  back  with 
loss  on  Boston.  The  next  engagement  was  more  ominous 
still.  The  patriots  occupied  Breed's  Hill  (not  Bunker's  June 
Hill,  but  an  adjoining  height),  which  commanded  Boston, 
and  fortified  it  with  a  redoubt  and  breastwork.  It  seems 
that  they  might  have  been  dislodged  by  manoeuvring. 
But  the  royal  commander,  in  his  pipe-clay  pedantry  and 
pride,  chose  to  lead  his  men  on  a  hot  summer's  day  with 
heavy  knapsacks  on  their  backs  up  the  front  of  the  hill 


90  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAI  . 

against  the  breastwork.  Thrice  they  mounted  in  fac-3 
of  the  fire  of  the  sharp-shooters,  who  from  under  cover 
securely  shot  them  down.  The  third  charge  took  the  posi 
tion,  and  a  captured  gun  stands  on  the  citadel  of  Quebe  3 
as  the  trophy  and  proof  of  royalist  victory;  but  the  loss 
had  been  immense  and  the  moral  advantage  was  with  th<3 
insurgents.  Gage  now  gave  place  to  Howe,  and  Howo 
found  himself  surrounded  in  Boston  by  swarms  of  Minuto 
Men  who  were  presently  under  the  command  of  a  good 
1775.  general.  The  appointment  of  Washington  as  commander- 
in-chief  of  the  Continental  forces  was  a  politic  compliment 
to  Virginia,  but  it  was  also  by  far  the  best  appointment 
that  could  be  made.  Washington  when  a  stripling  had 
made  a  wonderful  mark,  not  only  as  a  soldier  in  border 
war  against  the  Indians,  but  as  a  negotiator;  while  in 
Braddock's  disaster  he  had  shown  a  fortitude  and  stead 
fastness  in  defeat  which  were  to  be  inestimable  in  his  pres 
ent  place.  Having  suffered  in  military  grade  and  in 
feeling  so  as  to  be  led  to  resign  his  position  by  the 
exclusive  precedence  of  the  royal  officers,  he  would  not 
be  unwilling  to  measure  swords  with  them  in  the  field. 
He  found  an  army  undisciplined,  impatient  of  control, 
ill-equipped,  unprovided  with  ammunition.  But  he  man 
aged  to  hold  this  army  together,  to  present  a  front  which 
to  his  surprise  his  unenterprising  enemy  respected,  and 
at  last  on  a  dark  night  to  seize  and  fortify  an  eminence 
which  commanded  the  place  and  rendered  it  no  longer 

March  tenable.     Howe  evacuated  Boston,  where  redcoats  never 
1776. 

appeared  more. 

In  leaving  Boston  the  royal  fleet  took  with  it,  according 
to  Mr.  Sabine,  eleven  hundred  loyalists,  including  women 
and  children,  the  first  instalment  of  a  great  loyalist  migra- 


ii.  REVOLUTION,    INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  91 

tion.  The  number  included,  of  members  of  the  Council 
and  officials,  one  hundred  and  two  ;  of  clergymen,  eighteen ; 
of  inhabitants  of  country  towns,  one  hundred  and  five ;  of 
merchants  and  other  residents  in  Boston,  two  hundred 
and  thirteen ;  of  farmers,  mechanics,  and  traders,  three 
hundred  and  eighty-two.  The  case  of  these  people  is  not 
to  be  settled,  nor  is  the  witness  which  they  bore  to  their 
cause  to  be  annulled,  by  designating  them  as  Tories.  Was 
it  just  that  they  should  be  outlawed,  pillaged,  driven  from 
their  homes,  maltreated,  condemned  to  the  death  of  trai 
tors  by  men  who  had  but  yesterday  been  conspirators,  out 
wardly  professing  allegiance  to  the  government  to  which 
the  loyalists  adhered,  and  were  still  without  any  recognized 
government  of  their  own  ?  Were  not  the  loyalists  Ameri 
cans,  and  did  not  their  wrongs  exceed  any  of  those  done 
to  Americans  by  the  king  ?  On  the  eve  of  the  civil  war 
in  England,  Sir  William  Waller  the  Parliamentarian, 
wrote  to  Sir  Ralph  Hopton  the  Royalist:  " My  affections 
to  you  are  so  unchangeable  that  hostility  itself  cannot 
violate  my  friendship  to  your  person,  but  I  must  be  true 
to  the  cause  wherein  I  serve.  The  old  limitation  of  usque 
ad  aras  holds  still.  .  .  .  The  great  God,  who  is  the  searcher 
of  my  heart,  knows  with  what  reluctance  I  go  upon  this 
service,  and  with  what  perfect  hatred  I  look  upon  war 
without  an  enemy.  But  I  look  upon  it  as  opus  domini, 
and  that  is  enough  to  silence  all  passion  in  me.  The  God 
of  Peace  in  His  good  time  send  us  peace,  and  in  the  mean 
time  fit  us  to  receive  it!  We  are  both  on  the  stage  and 
we  must  act  the  parts  that  are  assigned  us  in  this  tragedy. 
Let  us  do  it  in  a  way  of  honour,  and  without  personal 
animosities."  Such  was  the  spirit  of  men  mournfully 
obeying  in  a  great  cause  the  inevitable  call  of  civil  war. 


92  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

There  was  little   of   it  on  either  side    in    the   American 
Revolution. 

The  loyalists  retaliated  when  they  could;  where  the} 
were  strong  they  became  the  aggressors,  and  as  theii 
party  included,  with  some  of  the  chiefs  of  society,  man} 
of  the  lowest  and  wildest  class,  they  rivalled  and  probably- 
outvied  their  opponents  in  atrocity.  The  civil  strife  grew 
more  murderous  and  viler  as  it  went  on.  "  The  animosities 
between  Whigs  and  Tories,"  wrote  the  worthy  American 
General  Greene,  "render  their  situation  truly  deplorable 
The  Whigs  seem  determined  to  extirpate  the  Tories  and 
the  Tories  the  Whigs.  Some  thousands  have  fallen  in 
this  way  in  this  quarter  and  the  evil  rages  with  mort 
violence  than  ever.  If  a  stop  cannot  be  put  to  the  massa 
cres,  the  country  will  be  depopulated  in  a  few  months,  as 
neither  Whig  nor  Tory  can  win."  "  The  people  of  tht 
South,"  says  Chief  Justice  Marshall,  "  felt  all  the  miseries 
which  are  inflicted  by  war  in  its  most  savage  form.  Being 
almost  equally  divided  between  the  two  contending  parties, 
reciprocal  injuries  had  gradually  sharpened  their  resent 
ment  against  each  other  and  had  armed  neighbour  against 
neighbour  until  it  had  become  a  war  of  extermination.  As 
the  parties  alternately  triumphed,  opportunity  was  alter 
nately  given  for  the  exercise  of  their  vindictive  passions." 
Even  in  the  Wars  of  the  Roses,  amidst  the  mutual  butch 
eries  of  the  aristocratic  factions  the  common  people  had 
been  spared  and  had  spared  each  other.  Nor  were  the 
royal  officers  now  behind  in  cruelty.  They  bombarded 
seaboard  towns,  and  in  their  executions  of  relapsed  rebels 
violated  the  humanities  if  not  the  laws  of  ordinary  war. 
Between  rebellion  and  belligerency  there  is  a  doubtful 
period  during  which  the  agents  of  government  think 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  93 

themselves  licensed  to  give  way  to  their  passions  under 
the  name  of  crushing  treason.  Among  the  loyalists  of  the 
baser  sort  some  exercised  brigandage  in  the  name  of  the 
crown.  The  devilry  was  completed  by  the  introduction 
of  Indians,  whose  ferocity  no  commander  could  restrain, 
though  Carleton  and  Burgoyne  did  their  best.  They  had 
been  enlisted  first  by  the  colonists,  so  that  Chatham's 
tremendous  invective  was  misplaced  saving  as  such  a 
policy  might  be  more  disgraceful  to  a  government  than  to 
rebels.  The  horrors  of  Wyoming,  painted  both  in  verse 
and  prose,  were  the  work  of  Indians  led  on  by  a  band  of 
Tories  who  had  themselves  been  driven  from  their  homes. 

John  Adams  has  given  us  an  account  of  the  doings  at 
Philadelphia  while  the  politicians  were  hatching  the  revo 
lution.  In  the  evening  at  Mr.  Mifflin's  there  was  "an 
elegant  supper  and  we  drank  sentiments  till  eleven  o'clock. 
Lee  and  Harrison  were  very  high.  Lee  had  dined  with 
Mr.  Dickenson  and  drank  Burgundy  the  whole  afternoon." 
From  nine  in  the  morning  till  three  in  the  afternoon  the 
delegates  attended  to  business,  "  then  they  adjourned  and 
went  to  dine  with  some  of  the  nobles  of  Pennsylvania  at 
four  o'clock,  and  feasted  upon  ten  thousand  delicacies,  and 
sat  drinking  Madeira,  Claret,  or  Burgundy  till  six  or  seven, 
and  then  went  home  fatigued  to  death  with  business, 
company,  and  care."  It  is  a  pity  that  in  such  cases  there 
cannot  mingle  with  the  flavour  of  the  Claret  and  Burgundy 
a  foretaste  of  the  bitterness  of  civil  war.  But  the  politi 
cians  who  quaff  the  wine  too  seldom  drink  of  the  other 
cup. 

Meantime  the  colonists  had  grasped  at  Canada,  which 
they  thought  would  fall  into  their  arms.  Among  the 
charges  originally  levelled  by  New  England  against  the 


94  THE  UNITED  STATES.  CHA  >. 

king's  government  was  that  of  having  by  the  Quebec  Act 
established  in  Canada  Roman  Catholicism,  which  New 
England  stigmatized  as  a  religion  that  had  "  drenched 
Great  Britain  in  blood  and  disseminated  impiety,  bigotry, 
persecution,  murder,  and  rebellion  through  every  part  of 
the  world.'*  Afterwards  the  colonists,  desiring  to  draw 
Canada  into  their  league,  addressed  her  in  a  different 
strain,  setting  forth  how  under  the  blessed  influence  of 
republican  liberty  Roman  Catholicism  and  Protestantism 
might  dwell  together  in  the  sweetest  peace.  But  the 
Canadian  clergy,  having  both  manifestoes  before  them, 
believed  in  the  genuineness  of  the  first,  which  was  moie 
in  accordance  with  the  practice  and  even  with  the  laws  of 
Massachusetts.  They  advised  their  people  to  adhere  io 
Great  Britain  or  at  least  to  be  neutral,  and  their  influence 
was  seconded  by  the  conduct  of  Sir  Guy  Carleton,  a  wis3, 
brave,  and  popular  governor.  The  Americans  finding 
honeyed  words  unavailing,  invaded  Canada  and  took  Mon 
treal,  but  they  were  repulsed  in  a  daring  attack  to  storm 
Quebec  in  which  their  general,  Montgomery,  fell  and 
P_e_c;  Canada  was  lost  to  the  Union. 

1775. 

From  Boston  the  scene  of  war  shifted  to  New  York, 
where  royalism  was  strong,  and  neutrality  still  stronger, 
especially  in  the  commercial  class,  while  by  occupying  that 
position  the  confederacy  might  be  cut  in  two.  Washington 
had  here  concentrated  his  forces  and  fortified  himself.  On 
Aug.  Long  Island  patriotism  for  the  first  time  met  discipline  in 
'  the  open  field  and  was  driven  in  flight  before  it.  Had 
Howe  followed  up  his  victory  there  probably  would  have 
been  an  end  of  the  Continental  army,  whatever  local 
resistance  might  have  survived.  But  Howe,  there  can  be 
little  doubt,  was  wavering  as  well  as  lethargic  and  instead 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  95 

of  pressing  his  enemy  he  went  to  luncheon.  New  York 
was  taken.  Some  of  the  patriots  had  proposed  to  burn  it, 
"  since,"  as  General  Greene  said,  "  two-thirds  of  the  prop 
erty  of  the  city  and  suburbs  belonged  to  the  Tories."  It 
was  fired,  but  was  saved  by  the  captors  and  remained  the 
centre  of  royal  operations  to  the  end  of  the  war.  Howe's 
subsequent  conduct  seems  to  have  been  marked  with  a 
sluggishness  and  irresolution  which  the  energy  of  his 
lieutenant,  Cornwallis,  could  not  redeem.  Washington 
was  allowed  to  pluck  victory  and  reputation  out  of  the 
jaws  of  defeat  by  surprising  two  battalions  of  Hessians 
who  were  sleeping  off  their  Christmas  debauch  at  Trenton, 
and  overwhelming  after  a  masterly  movement  two  isolated 
regiments  at  Princeton.  All  this  restored  the  confidence 
of  the  revolutionists  and  raised  their  military  character  in 
Europe,  notably  in  France,  while  the  excesses  of  Howe's 
mercenaries  turned  the  Jerseys  back  from  royalism  to  rev 
olution.  At  last  Howe  moved,  and  having  defeated  Wash-  Sept. 
ington  at  the  battle  of  the  Brandywine  entered  Philadel 
phia,  the  capital  of  the  confederacy,  where  he  was  well 
received  and  passed  a  highly  festive  winter.  Washington 
attempted  a  surprise  but  was  again  defeated,  though  not 
with  ease,  at  the  battle  of  Germantowii.  Notwithstanding 
Washington's  reverses,  with  him  remained  the  honours  of 
the  campaign. 

Howe,  feeling,  probably,  that  in  spite  of  his  successes 
in  the  field  the  attempt  to  subdue  the  colonists  was  a  fail 
ure,  and  having  achieved  as  little  by  diplomatic  offers  of 
reconciliation  as  by  force,  went  home  and  was  succeeded 
by  Sir  Henry  Clinton.  Washington  had  taken  up  his 
quarters  for  the  winter  near  his  enemy,  in  an  unassailable 
position  among  the  hills  at  Valley  Forge.  This  winter  at  1778. 


9(3  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP 

Valley  Forge  is  the  most  heroic  episode  of  the  revolution. 
Washington's  men,  more  the  men  of  Washington  than 
the  men  of  the  revolution  or  the  Congress,  were  lef : 
without  meat  for  days  together,  sometimes  without  bread ; 
without  blankets,  so  that  they  had  to  sit  up  by  their  camp- 
fires  to  keep  themselves  warm;  and  without  shoes,  so  thao 
the  traces  of  their  march  over  the  snow  were  marked  with 
blood.  Yet  they  showed  of  what  race  they  were  by  hold 
ing  together  and  making  their  foe  beware  of  them.  Dur 
ing  the  winter  they  went  through  a  course  of  drill  under 
Steuben,  a  Prussian,  and  other  foreign  officers,  which  put 
them  on  a  level  with  the  king's  soldiers,  their  natural 
qualities  being  the  same. 

Washington  was  to  the  confederacy  all  in  all.  Without 
him  it  would  have  been  ten  times  lost,  and  the  names  cf 
the  politicians  who  had  drawn  the  country  into  the  conflict 
would  have  gone  down  to  posterity  linked  with  defeat  an  I 
shame.  History  has  hardly  a  stronger  case  of  an  indispen 
sable  man.  His  form,  like  all  other  forms  of  the  revolu 
tion,  has  no  doubt  been  seen  through  a  golden  haze  of 
panegyric.  We  can  hardly  number  among  the  greatest 
captains  a  general  who  acted  on  so  small  a  scale  and  who, 
though  he  was  the  soul  of  the  war,  never  won  a  battle;. 
In  that  respect  Carlyle,  who  threatened  "  to  take  George 
down  a  peg  or  two,"  might  have  made  good  his  threat. 
But  he  could  not  have  stripped  Washington  of  any  part 
of  his  credit  for  patriotism,  wisdom,  and  courage  ;  for  the 
union  of  enterprise  with  prudence ;  for  integrity  and  truth 
fulness  ;  for  simple  dignity  of  character  ;  for  tact  and  for 
bearance  in  dealing  with  men ;  above  all  for  serene 
fortitude  in  the  darkest  hour  of  his  cause  and  under  trials 
from  the  perversity,  insubordination,  jealousy,  and  perfidy 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  97 

of  those  around  him  severer  than  any  defeat.  Some  Amer 
ican  writers  seem  anxious  to  prove  that  Washington's 
character  is  essentially  different  from  that  of  an  English 
gentleman.  About  this  we  need  not  dispute.  The  char 
acter  of  an  English  gentleman  is  certainly  devoid  of  any 
traits  that  might  be  derived  either  from  a  plantation  or 
from  war  with  Indians  in  the  backwoods.  Yet  an  Eng 
lish  gentleman  sees  in  Washington  his  ideal  as  surely  as  he 
does  not  see  it  in  Franklin,  Samuel  Adams,  or  Patrick 
Henry.  It  has  been  truly  said  that  Washington  and  Well 
ington  have  much  in  common.  Wellington  contending 
with  Spanish  perversity  and  ministerial  incompetence 
reminds  us  by  his  calmness  and  self-control  of  Washington 
contending  with  the  folly  and  dishonesty  of  Congress  and 
the  fractiousness  of  the  state  militia.  They  write  in  the 
same  even,  passionless,  and  somewhat  formal  style,  the 
expression  of  a  mind  always  master  of  itself.  In  both  of 
them  there  was,  though  under  control,  the  strong  temper 
which  is  almost  inseparable  from  force.  Wellington 
might  be  more  of  an  aristocrat  than  Washington,  less  of  a 
democrat  he  could  hardly  be.  Washington  insisted  that 
his  officers  should  be  gentlemen,  not  men  fit  to  be  shoe 
blacks.  He  drew  a  most  undemocratic  distinction  be 
tween  the  officer  and  the  private  soldier.  His  notions 
about  the  private  soldier  are  those  of  an  old  world  discipli 
narian.  He  says  that  the  soldier  should  be  satisfied  to 
serve  for  his  food,  clothes,  and  pay,  and  complains  that  he 
cannot  lay  on  the  back  of  the  insubordinate  patriot  more 
than  one  hundred  lashes,  holding  that  five  hundred  are  not 
too  many.  The  other  army  leaders,  Gates  and  Lee,  caballed 
against  him  and  were  abetted  by  politicians  morbidly  or 
perhaps  selfishly  jealous  of  military  ascendancy.  It  appears 


98  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

that  both  Samuel  and  John  Adams,  if  they  did  not  in 
trigue,  were  unfriendly  to  Washington  and  would  willingly 
have  seen  him  superseded.  Washington  bore  the  attacks 
on  him  magnanimously,  never  allowing  his  personal  wrongs 
to  interfere  with  his  duty  nor  ever  thinking  of  abandoning 
his  post.  Perhaps  in  the  whole  conflict  the  three  noblest 
things  are  the  character  of  Washington,  the  behaviour  of  his 
army  at  Valley  Forge,  and  the  devotion  of  the  better  class 
of  loyalists.  On  Washington's  death  the  flags  of  the  Brit 
ish  fleet  under  Lord  Bridport  were  half-masted.  We  owe 
the  American  Hildreth  thanks  for  recording  the  fact. 

A  plan  had  been  formed  by  the  British  war  office  for 
a  movement  from  Canada  down  the  valleys  of  the  Mohawk 
and  the  Hudson,  so  as  to  break  the  centre  of  the  confed 
eracy.  Burgoyne,  who  seems  to  have  been  the  originatoi 
of  the  plan,  was  put  in  command.  He  had  won  some 
distinction  in  war,  but  was  more  of  a  wit,  a  playwright. 
Sept.  and  a  social  star  than  a  captain.  Down  the  Hudson  and 
1777 '  Mohawk  he  came  with  six  or  seven  thousand  regulars. 
British  and  German,  some  Canadian  auxiliaries,  and  a 
train  of  Indians.  The  royal  general  at  New  York  was  to 
have  moved  out  to  meet  him,  but  the  despatch  was  not 
sent  in  time  because,  as  tradition  has  it,  Lord  George 
Germaine  had  chosen  to  hurry  off  to  his  pleasures  instead 
of  waiting  till  the  clerks  had  done  their  work.  Burgoyne 
took  a  wrong  course,  lost  himself  in  a  tangled  country, 
found  no  Clinton  to  meet  him,  was  deserted  by  his  Cana 
dians  and  Indians,  and  was  surrounded  by  the  local  militia, 
famous  bush-fighters  and  riflemen,  who  poured  out  in 
defence  of  their  own  states.  Here  was  seen  the  strength 
of  the  local  resistance  in  contrast  with  the  weakness  of 
the  confederation.  Hemmed  in  by  swarms  of  sharp- 


ii.  REVOLUTION,  INDEPENDENCE,  AND   UNION.  99 

shooters,  whose  number  was  four  times  his  own,  and 
unable  to  get  open  battle,  Burgoyne  was  forced  to  surren 
der.  This  he  did  under  a  convention  providing  that  he  Oct. 
and  his  troops  should  be  sent  to  England  under  parole 
not  to  serve  against  America.  It  occurred  to  Congress 
that  the  troops,  though  they  could  not  be  used  against 
America,  might  be  used  in  setting  other  troops  free  for 
that  service.  On  pretexts  utterly  frivolous  and  disowned 
by  the  American  commander  Congress  broke  the  conven 
tion,  detained  the  troops,  and  against  the  laws  of  war  tried 
to  entice  the  men  into  its  own  service.  It  was  a  violation 
of  public  faith  for  which  no  real  excuse  has  been  offered. 
Nor  did  Congress  stop  here.  It  insisted  that  the  sum 
which  had  been  expended  in  provisions  for  the  captured 
army  in  Continental  paper  should  be  repaid  in  gold  three 
times  the  paper's  worth,  and  this  while  it  was  treating  the 
refusal  of  the  paper  as  a  crime.  "  Jay,"  ejaculated  Gouver- 
neur  Morris  thirty  years  afterwards,  "  what  a  set  of  d — d 
scoundrels  we  had  in  that  second  Congress ! "  "  Yes," 
said  Jay,  "we  had,"  and  he  knocked  the  ashes  from  his 
pipe.  Jt  seems  that  when  Congress  had  sunk  into  impo 
tence  and  discredit  some  of  the  best  men  left  it  to  employ 
their  energies  in  their  own  states,  probably  the  best  of  all 
were  in  the  field.  From  Gates  and  from  Schuyler  of  New 
York,  to  whom  Burgoyne  surrendered,  he  and  his  troops 
received  chivalrous  treatment.  When  they  got  to  Boston 
there  was  a  change.  Madame  de  Riedesel,  the  wife  of  the 
German  general,  complains  that  she  was  cruelly  insulted 
by  the  Boston  women.  In  her  memoir  we  are  told  that 
the  wife  and  young  daughter  of  Captain  Fenton,  a  royalist 
absentee,  were  stripped  naked,  tarred  and  feathered,  and 
paraded  through  the  city.  The  Americans  on  their  side 


100  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

had  too  much  reason  to  complain  of  the  cruel  treatment  of 
prisoners  at  New  York  by  royal  commanders  at  New  York 
who  had  no  pity  for  those  whom  they  still  deemed  rebels, 
or  Tory  officials  made  merciless  by  the  rage  of  faction. 
Such  is  civil  war.  There  is  no  test  of  the  humanity  of  a 
nation  so  trying  as  civil  war.  We  have  to  wait  till  a  later 
period  to  see  that  the  test  might  be  borne. 

Clinton  presently  evacuated  Philadelphia  and  fell  back 
1778  on  New  York,  which  remained  in  the  king's  hands  to  the 
last.  On  the  march  he  fought  a  drawn  battle  with  Wash 
ington  at  Monmouth  Court  House,  in  which  the  improved 
drill  of  Washington's  soldiers  showed  its  effect.  He  took 
with  him  from  Philadelphia  three  thousand  loyalists  who 
dared  not  fall  into  the  hands  of  the  Whigs.  Of  those  who 
remained  behind  a  number  were  condemned  to  death,  but 
two  Quakers  only  were  hanged. 

The  Netherlands,  when  they  rose  against  Spain  and  the 
Inquisition,  had  a  cause  terribly  great  and  showed  spirit 
as  great  as  their  cause.  The  cause  in  which  the  Ameri 
cans  rose  against  the  imperial  government  was  not  so 
great  if  it  was  not  largely  rhetorical,  and  the  amount  of 
spirit  which  they  showed  was  proportional.  When  from 
drinking  patriotic  toasts,  declaiming  against  tyranny, 
tarring  and  feathering  Tories,  and  hanging  stamp  collec 
tors  in  effigy,  it  came  to  paying  war  contributions  and 
facing  the  shot,  enthusiasm  declined.  Of  this  Washing 
ton  became  sensible  as  soon  as  he  had  assumed  the  com 
mand.  From  the  lines  before  Boston,  28th  November. 
1775,  he  writes  :  "  Such  a  dearth  of  public  spirit  and  such 
want  of  virtue,  such  stock-jobbing  and  fertility  in  all  the 
low  arts  to  obtain  advantages  of  one  kind  or  another,  in 
this  great  change  of  military  arrangement,  I  never  saw 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,  AND   UNION.  101 

before,  and  pray  God's  mercy  that  I  may  never  be  witness 
to  again."  This  wail  runs  through  his  letters,  growing 
more  and  more  mournful  to  the  end  of  the  war,  or  at 
least  till  the  arrival  of  French  aid.  From  Valley  Forge 
in  1778  he  writes :  "  Men  are  naturally  fond  of  peace,  and 
there  are  symptoms  that  may  authorize  an  opinion  that  the 
people  of  America  are  pretty  generally  weary  of  the 
present  war.  It  is  doubtful  whether  many  of  our  friends 
might  not  incline  to  an  accommodation  on  the  grounds 
held  out,  or  which  may  be,  rather  than  persevere  in  a  con 
test  for  independence."  From  Philadelphia,  30th  Decem 
ber,  1778,  he  writes :  "  If  I  were  called  upon  to  draw  a 
picture  of  the  times  and  of  men  from  what  I  have  seen, 
heard  and  in  part  know,  I  should  in  one  word  say  that 
idleness,  dissipation,  and  extravagance  seem  to  have  laid 
fast  hold  of  most  of  them ;  that  speculation,  peculation, 
and  an  insatiable  thirst  for  riches  seem  to  have  got  the 
better  of  every  other  consideration,  and  almost  of  every 
order  of  men ;  that  party  disputes  and  personal  quarrels 
are  the  great  business  of  the  day;  while  the  momentous 
concerns  of  the  empire,  a  great  and  accumulating  debt, 
ruined  finances,  depreciated  money,  and  want  of  credit 
which  in  its  consequences  is  the  want  of  everything,  are 
but  secondary  considerations  and  postponed  from  day  to 
day,  from  week  to  week,  as  if  our  affairs  wore  the  most 
promising  aspect."  John  Adams  had  oratorically  decreed 
that  the  war  should  be  violent  and  short,  but  oratory  does 
not  shorten  war  or  make  anything  violent  but  passion. 
The  eloquent  opponents  of  the  tea  duty  did  not,  like  the 
opponent  of  ship-money,  take  the  field.  They  were 
content  with  the  part,  to  use  a  phrase  adopted  by  Wash 
ington,  of  chimney  corner  heroes.  If  John  Adams  could 


102  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

sigh  as  he  said  he  did  for  things  as  they  had  been  before 
the  war,  the  people  were  not  likely  to  feel  that  the  change 
was  worth  much  of  their  money  or  their  blood.  When 
the  war  came  their  way  they  would  readily  turn  out,  and 
fight  well  in  their  own  sharp-shooting  fashion  in  defence 
of  their  own  states,  but  they  would  not  readily  turn  out 
in  the  Continental  cause  even  though  the  assembly  of 
Virginia  might  offer  to  any  patriot  who  would  take  arms 
to  deliver  the  country  from  slavery  three  hundred  acres  of 
land  and  a  healthy  sound  negro.  If  they  did  turn  out  it 
was  for  a  fixed  term,  and  at  the  end  of  that  term  they 
insisted  upon  taking  their  departure,  notwithstanding  it 
might  be  the  eve  of  a  battle,  carrying  with  them  their 
arms  and  ammunition,  not  assuredly  because  they  lacked 
courage,  but  because  they  lacked  zeal  in  the  cause.  "  Sol 
diers  absent  themselves  from  their  duty  in  numbers,  stay 
ing  at  their  homes,  sometimes  in  the  employment  of  their 
officers ;  drawing  pay,  while  they  are  working  on  their 
own  plantations  or  for  hire."  The  troops  of  Connecticut 
at  one  time  were  mostly  on  furlough,  and  Washington 
finds  such  a  mercenary  spirit  pervading  them  that  he  could 
not  be  surprised  at  any  disaster.  Regiments  are  expected 
in  vain,  harvest  and  a  thousand  other  excuses  being  given 
for  delay.  At  a  critical  moment  a  militia  is  reduced 
from  six  thousand  to  less  than  two  thousand.  It  takes 
all  the  exertion  of  the  officers  to  induce  a  corps  to  stay 
six  weeks  on  a  bounty  of  ten  dollars.  Washington's 
army  in  short  is  always  moulting ;  there  is  not  time 
to  drill  the  men  before  they  are  gone,  and  discipline  is 
impossible  because  if  it  was  enforced  they  would  go. 
Washington  complains  also  of  the  want  of  patriotic  feel 
ing  among  the  people.  The  conduct  of  the  Jerseys,  he 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  103 

says,  "  is  most  infamous ;  instead  of  aiding  him  they  are 
making  their  submission  as  fast  as  they  can.  Pennsylva- 
nian  militiamen,  instead  of  responding  to  the  summons  of 
the  Council  of  Safety,  exult  at  the  approach  of  the  enemy 
and  over  the  misfortunes  of  their  own  friends.  The  dis 
affection  of  Pennsylvania  is  beyond  conception.  The 
people  bring  supplies  as  readily  to  the  royal  army  as  to 
their  own ;  more  readily  in  fact,  since  the  royal  army  pays 
not  in  paper  but  cash."  Officers  appropriate  the  money 
for  the  payment  of  the  troops.  Cabals  and  intrigues 
about  appointments,  jealousies  between  soldiers  from  dif 
ferent  states,  selfish  interests  of  all  kinds  are  stronger 
than  adherence  to  the  cause.  There  was  the  pride  too, 
though  Washington  does  not  mention  it,  of  the  Virginian 
gentlemen  who  looked  down  on  the  New  England  trader 
not  less  than  the  officers  of  the  royal  army  had  looked 
down  011  those  of  the  colonial  militia.  All  this  goes  far 
towards  justifying  the  king's  judgment  and  that  of  his 
informants  as  to  the  strength  of  the  resistance  and  the 
chances  of  the  war.  The  army,  Washington  says,  was 
at  one  time  losing  more  by  desertion  than  it  gained  by 
recruiting.  Deserters,  defaulters,  and  malingerers,  of 
whom  there  were  also  plenty,  had  every  excuse  that  the 
failure  of  the  commissariat  and  the  arsenals  could  give. 
Two  thousand  men  at  one  time  were  without  firelocks, 
and  the  supplies  of  food  and  clothing  seem  to  have 
been  always  most  defective.  That  his  men  should  be 
starving,  shivering,  and  marking  their  marches  over  the 
snow  with  their  blood,  while  forestallers,  regraters,  and 
monopolists  are  flourishing,  stings  Washington  to  the  soul. 
The  end  of  the  dealings  of  Congress  with  the  army  was 
that  the  army  became  a  skeleton,  and  there  was  at  last  a 


104  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

mutiny  of  the  Pennsylvania!!  militia  which  was  prevented 
from  being  fatal  only  by  the  personal  ascendancy  of  the 
general.  A  sufficient  force  of  regular  troops,  serving  for 
adequate  pay  and  pensions,  was  Washington's  constant 
desire.  Cromwell's  insight  taught  him,  after  Edgehill, 
that  instead  of  men  serving  only  for  pay  he  must  form 
an  army  of  men  whose  hearts  were  in  the  cause.  Wash 
ington's  insight  after  a  few  months  of  command  taught 
him  that  when  enthusiasm  had  grown  cold  an  army  must 
be  formed  of  men  serving  for  good  pay.  "  When  men," 
he  says,  "are  irritated  and  passion  inflamed  they  fly 
hastily  and  cheerfully  to  arms ;  but  after  the  first  emotions 
are  over  to  expect  the  bulk  of  an  army  to  be  influenced  by 
anything  but  self-interest  is  to  look  for  what  never  did 
happen."  Cromwell  and  Washington  alike  recognized 
the  supremacy  of  discipline.  "  To  lean  on  the  militia," 
says  Washington,  "is  to  lean  on  a  broken  reed.  Being 
familiar  with  the  use  of  the  musket  they  will  fight  under 
cover,  but  they  will  not  attack  or  stand  in  the  open 
field." 

States  refused  to  tax  themselves  and  Congress  had  no 
power  to  tax  them.  Its  war  budget  was  one  of  confisca 
tions,  forced  requisitions,  and  paper  money.  From  the 
printing  press,  its  mint,  issued  ever  increasing  volumes  of 
paper  currency,  the  value  of  which  as  usual  rapidly  de 
clined,  and  all  the  faster  the  more  Congress  and  its  parti 
sans,  like  the  French  Jacobins  after  them,  had  recourse  to 
violence  to  make  bad  money  pass  for  good.  A  hotel  bill 
of  seven  hundred  pounds  was  paid  with  three  pounds  cash. 
The  phrase  came  into  vogue,  "  Not  worth  a  continental." 
At  last,  as  Washington  said,  there  was  almost  a  stagna 
tion  of  purchase.  There  could  not  fail  to  ensue  a  fearful 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  105 

disturbance  of  commerce  and  of  commercial  morality. 
Debts  contracted  in  good  money  were  paid  in  worthless 
paper.  Washington  was  himself  thus  defrauded  while  he 
was  serving  the  country  without  pay,  a  wrong  of  which  he 
speaks  with  his  usual  magnanimity.  Gambling  and  specu 
lation  naturally  followed.  Fortunes  were  made  by  knaves 
and  riotous  living  went  on  while  the  army  suffered  and 
dwindled  to  a  shadow.  Years  afterwards  Tom  Paine,  no 
straight-laced  economist,  seriously  demanded  that  any  one 
who  proposed  to  return  to  paper  money  should  be  punished 
with  death.  The  inestimable  clause  in  the  American  con 
stitution  forbidding  legislation  which  would  impair  the 
faith  of  contracts,  may  perhaps  be  regarded  in  part  as  a 
memorial  of  those  evil  times. 

A  fleet,  Congress  can  scarcely  be  said  to  have  had. 
But  what  local  assistance,  independently  of  the  armies  of 
the  central  government,  did  on  land,  privateers  manned 
by  the  hardy  seamen  of  New  England  did  at  sea.  A  num 
ber  of  English  merchantmen  were  captured  in  American 
waters,  and  Paul  Jones  in  his  Bonhomme  Richard  made 
himself  the  terror  of  the  English  coasts.  The  royal  navy 
however  presently  asserted  its  superior  power,  and  Ameri 
can  commerce  was  swept  from  the  sea. 

The  surrender  of  Burgoyne  proved  decisive,  as  it 
brought  France  to  the  aid  of  the  Americans.  Ever  since 
her  loss  of  Canada  she  had  been  intriguing  through  her 
agents  in  the  colonies.  From  the  outset  of  the  war  she 
had  been  sending  secret  aid  to  the  revolutionists,  and 
lying  when  expostulations  were  addressed  to  her.  The 
motive  of  her  government  was  enmity  to  England.  But 
there  was  a  section  of  her  aristocracy  which  had  embraced 
political  reform  and  even  begun  to  dally  with  revolution,  a 


106  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAI  . 

pastime  for  which  the  salons  afterwards  paid  dear.  A 
youthful  scion  of  this  section,  Lafayette,  fired  at  the  sight 
of  American  revolt,  had  gone  forth  on  a  republican  crusado 
Feb.  and  become  the  companion  in  arms  of  Washington.  After 
Burgoyne's  surrender  American  envoys  were  able  to  pei- 
suade  the  French  government  to  make  a  treaty  with  tli3 
colonies  and  go  to  war  with  Great  Britain,  from  whom 

1779.  France  had  received  not  the  slightest  provocation.     Spain 
was  afterwards  drawn  in,  not  by  sympathy  with  the  Ameri 
cans  whom  she  regarded  as  dangerous  neighbours  to  her 
American  dependencies,  but   by  the  hope   of  recovering 

1780.  Gibraltar;  Holland  by  maritime  jealousies  and  disputes. 
Thus  England,  in  addition  to  her  revolted  colonists,  had 
the  greatest  military  power  in  Europe  and  the  three  great 
est  naval  powers  on  her  hands.     She  lost  that  command  of 
the  sea  which  had  enabled  her  to  crush  the  commerce  of 
the  colonists,  to  wear  them  out  by  pressure  on  the  seaboard, 
and  to  choose  her  own  point  of  attack.     On  the  other  hand 
her  national   spirit  was   aroused  to   do   battle  with   her 
ancient  foe.     Chatham  would  have  dropped  the  colonies 
and  turned  on  France.      Lord  North,  being  no  Chatham, 
sent  out  commissioners  with  overtures  of  reconciliation, 
offering   the    colonies   representation   in  Parliament.     Of 
course   his    attempt   proved   worse   than   vain.     A   great 
French  fleet  under  d'Estaing  soon  appeared  on  the  scene. 
A   French  army  was  to  follow,  and  the   French  treasury 
supplied  Congress  with  the  hard  cash  of  which  it  was  by 
this   time   in  the   sorest  need.     Incompatibilities  and  mis 
understandings    between   the    French   and    their   colonial 
allies  put  off  the  catastrophe,  but  the  balance  was  decisively 
turned  and  the  result  was  no  longer  in  doubt.     "  To  me," 
said   Washington,    August   20th,    1780,    "it   will    appear 


ii.  REVOLUTION,    INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  107 

miraculous  if  our  affairs  can  maintain  themselves  much 
longer."  "  If,"  he  added,  "  the  temper  and  resources  of 
the  country  will  not  admit  of  alteration,  we  may  be  reduced 
to  seeing  the  cause  in  America  upheld  by  foreign  arms." 
That  time  had  now  come. 

It  was  in  the  dark  hour  before  the  arrival  of  French  aid 
that  treason  entered  into  the  heart  of  Benedict  Arnold,  the 
commander  of  the  all-important  lines  upon  the  Hudson. 
Arnold  had  been  one  of  the  best  of  the  American  com 
manders,  perhaps  the  most  daring  of  them  all.  He  had 
reason  to  complain  of  slights  and  wrongs,  not  at  the  hands 
of  Washington  who  valued  and  trusted  him,  but  at  the 
hands  of  the  politicians.  He  seems  to  have  despaired  of 
the  revolutionary  cause  and  to  have  shrunk  from  the  French 
alliance,  suspecting  as  did  others  that  the  French  had 
designs  on  Canada,  and  to  have  made  up  his  mind  to  play 
Monk.  He  opened  clandestine  negotiations  with  Clinton, 
whose  adjutant  and  envoy  was  the  ill-starred  Andre*,  a 
young  man  of  culture  and  sensibility.  By  Arnold's  invi-  1780. 
tation  Andrd  visited  the  American  lines,  and  on  his  way 
back  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  enemy  while  Arnold  had 
just  time  to  escape.  Whether  having  been  drawn  into  the 
American  lines  by  their  commander  he  was  guilty  of  hav 
ing  acted  as  a  spy  must  be  decided  by  martial  law,  which 
has  rules  and  a  phraseology  of  its  own.  But  it  can  hardly 
be  said  that  he  was  tried.  He  was  convicted  and  sentenced 
solely  on  his  own  statement,  of  which  the  incriminating 
part  was  taken,  while  to  the  exculpating  part,  his  averment 
that  he  had  been  unwittingly  drawn  by  Arnold  within  the 
lines,  no  weight  was  allowed,  though  the  evidence  for  both 
was  the  same.  Greene,  who  presided  over  the  court,  had 
written  before  the  trial :  "  I  wrote  you  a  letter  by  the  post 


108  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

yesterday  respecting  General  Arnold.  Since  writing  that 
letter  General  Washington  is  arrived  in  camp  and  the 
British  Adjutant  General  and  Joshua  Smith,  both  of  whom 
are  kept  under  strong  guard.  They  are  to  be  tried  this 
day  and  doubtless  will  be  hung  to-morrow."  It  seems  vain 
to  cite  the  foreign  officers  who  sat  in  the  court  of  inquiry 
as  impartial  judges ;  they  were  enemies  of  England  and  of 
2d  Englishmen.  Andre'  was  hanged  with  great  parade,  his 

(  )f*t 

1790.  prayer   that   he   might   be   shot  having  been  refused  by 
Washington,  and  as  his   enemies   denied  him  a  soldier's 
death  his   country  did  right  in  giving  him  more  than  a 
soldier's  tomb.     It  seems  certainly  to  have  been  hinted  to 
Sir  Henry  Clinton  that  Andre  might  be   exchanged  for 
Arnold.     If  the  hint  came  from  any  important  quarter  a 
dark  shade  is  cast  upon  the  execution  of  Andre*. 
1779.       After    Burgoyne's   disaster   and  the    proof   which   the 
Northern  States  had  on  that  occasion  given  of  their  spirit, 
the  royal  commanders  turned  to  the  South,  which  they 
might  hope  to  detach  and  save  for  the  king,  even  if  the 
North  was  lost.     In  the  South  there  was  reason  to  believe 
that  Koyalism  was  stronger  than  in  the  North.    The  people 
were  not  Puritan,  they  were  more  monarchical  than  those 
of   New   England,   more    simple-minded,   and    being    not 
traders  or  manufacturers  but  husbandmen,  they  had  been 
13th   less  galled  by  the  laws  of  trade.     Clinton  took  Charleston, 
1780    the  chief  southern  port  and  city,   with  a  large  garrison 
and   great   stores.     Cornwallis,   left    in    command    while 
Clinton  returned  to  New  York,  gained  an  easy  and  com 
plete  victory  over  very  superior  numbers   at  Camden  in 
16th    South   Carolina,  the    militia   giving   signal  proof   of   the 
mo',  truth  of  Washington's  saying  that  they  would  not  stand 
against  regulars  in  the  open  field.     He  afterwards  gained 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  109 

a  victory  less  easy  or  complete  over  Greene,  the  best  of  Mar. 
the  American  generals  save  Washington,  at  Guildford. 
Tarleton,  a  local  royalist,  also  did  wonders  with  his  light 
horsemen,  though  he  soon  found  his  match  in  the  Ameri 
can  Marion.  But  Tarleton,  with  a  detachment  of  Corn- 
wallis'  force  under  his  command,  attacking  in  his  over 
confidence  with  weary  troops,  was  defeated  at  the  Cowpens ;  Jan. 
the  only  battle,  if  an  engagement  on  so  small  a  scale  can  be 
called  a  battle,  lost  in  open  field  by  the  king's  troops  during 
the  war.  The  local  loyalism,  though  fiery  and  too  often 
cruel,  proved  not  staunch,  arid  the  effect  of  the  incursion 
was  rather  to  let  loose  mutual  massacre  and  plunder  amongst 
the  motley  population  of  Dutch,  Germans,  Quakers,  Irish 
Presbyterians,  and  Scotch  Highlanders,  than  to  bring  the 
colonies  back  to  their  allegiance.  A  combined  French 
and  American  attack  on  New  York  appearing  imminent, 
Cornwallis,  recalled  by  Clinton,  fell  back  into  Virginia 
and  intrenched  himself  on  a  neck  of  land  at  Yorktown  on 
the  Chesapeake  Bay,  in  a  position  which  so  long  as  his 
own  fleet  commanded  the  bay  was  a  stronghold,  but  when 
the  command  of  the  sea  was  lost  became  a  trap.  The 
command  of  the  sea  was  lost  by  the  arrival  of  a  French 
fleet  under  De  Grasse,  with  which  there  was  no  British 
fleet  to  cope.  Washington  uniting  his  army  to  that  of 
Rochambeau,  they  moved  together  on  Yorktown,  while 
some  misunderstanding,  as  it  appears,  between  Cornwallis 
and  Clinton  retarded  Clinton's  aid.  Cornwallis,  in  a 
desperate  position  and  beleaguered  by  an  army  four  times 
outnumbering  his  effective  force,  after  turning  his  eyes 
for  some  days  to  the  sea  in  the  vain  hope  of  discerning  Oct. 

1781 

British  sails,  was  compelled  to  capitulate  and  march  out, 
as  the  painting  in  the  hall  of  the   Capitol  depicts  him, 


110  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

between  the  lines  of  French  and  American  troops.  Wash 
ington  had  the  modesty  and  generosity  to  keep  off  specta 
tors.  This  was  the  end.  It  would  not  have  been  the  end 
if  America  had  been  a  foreign  enemy  and  the  heart  of  the 
British  nation  had  been  really  in  the  struggle.  It  was  not 
the  end  of  the  contest  with  France,  Spain,  and  Holland. 
But  of  the  contest  with  the  colonies  it  was  the  end.  The 
American  farmers  might  go  home,  hang  up  their  muskets 
and  follow  the  plough  as  they  had  in  "  the  old  colony 
days,"  which  probably  not  one  in  a  hundred  of  them  re 
garded  with  abhorrence  and  to  which  most  of  them,  we 
may  be  pretty  sure,  had  been  looking  back  with  regret. 
No  conflict  in  history  has  made  more  noise  than  the  Revolu 
tionary  War.  It  set  flowing  on  every  fourth  of  July  ^ 
copious  stream  of  panegyrical  rhetoric  which  has  only  jus"; 
begun  to  subside.  Everything  connected  with  it  has  been 
the  object  of  a  fond  exaggeration.  Skirmishes  have  been 
magnified  into  battles  and  every  leader  has  been  exalted 
into  a  hero.  Yet  the  action  and,  with  one  grand  exception, 
the  actors  were  less  than  heroic,  the  ultimate  conclusion 
was  foregone,  and  the  victory  after  all  was  due  not  to 
native  valour  but  to  foreign  aid. 

Civil  war  as  well  as  international  war  there  will  some 
times  be,  but  it  ought  always  to  be  closed  by  amnesty. 
For  amnesty  Cromwell  declared  on  the  morrow  of  Worces 
ter.  Amnesty  followed  the  second  civil  war  in  America. 
The  first  civil  war  was  followed  not  by  amnesty,  but  by  an 
outpouring  of  the  vengeance  of  the  victors  upon  the  fallen. 
Some  royalists  were  put  to  death.  Many  others  were 
despoiled  of  all  they  had  and  driven  from  their  country. 
Several  thousands  left  New  York  when  it  was  evacuated 
by  the  king's  troops.  Those  who  remained  underwent 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  Ill 

virulent  persecution.  Massachusetts  banished  by  name 
three  hundred  and  eight  of  her  people,  making  death  the 
penalty  for  a  second  return ;  New  Hampshire  proscribed 
seventy-six ;  Pennsylvania  attainted  nearly  five  hundred ; 
Delaware  confiscated  the  property  of  forty-six ;  North  Car 
olina  of  sixty-five  and  of  four  mercantile  firms ;  Georgia 
also  passed  an  act  of  confiscation ;  that  of  Maryland  was 
still  more  sweeping.  South  Carolina  divided  the  loyalists 
into  four  classes  inflicting  a  different  punishment  upon 
each.  Of  fifty-nine  persons  attainted  by  New  York  three 
were  married  women,  guilty  probably  of  nothing  but 
adhering  to  their  husbands,  and  members  of  the  council  or 
law  officers  who  were  bound  in  personal  honour  to  be 
faithful  to  the  crown.  Upon  the  evacuation  of  Charleston, 
as  a  British  officer  who  was  upon  the  spot  stated,  the  loy 
alists  were  imprisoned,  whipped,  tarred  and  feathered, 
dragged  through  horse  ponds,  and  carried  about  the  town 
with  ":Tory  "  on  their  breasts.  All  of  them  were  turned 
out  of  their  houses  and  plundered,  twenty-four  of  them 
were  hanged  upon  a  gallows  facing  the  quay  in  sight  of 
the  British  fleet  with  the  army  and  refugees  on  board. 
Such  was  the  statement  of  a  British  officer  who  was  upon 
the  spot,  ashore  and  an  eye  witness  to  the  whole.  Some 
of  these  men,  such  as  Johnson  the  guerrilla  leader  and 
Butler  the  author  of  the  attack  on  Wyoming,  had  been 
guilty  of  crimes  for  which  they  might  justly  have  suffered 
under  the  common  law,  though  they  could  not  have  suf 
fered  more  justly  than  some  ruffians  on  the  other  side. 
But  the  mass  had  been  guilty  of  nothing  but  fidelity  to 
a  lost  cause.  Honour,  we  will  say  with  Mr.  Sabine,  to 
those  who  protested ;  to  General  Greene,  who  said  that  it 
would  be  "  the  excess  of  intolerance  to  persecute  men  for 


112  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP 

opinions  which  twenty  years  before  had  been  the  universal 
belief  of  every  class  of  society  " ;  to  Alexander  Hamilton, 
who  nobly  stood  up  against  the  torrent  of  hatred  as  the, 
advocate  of  its  victims  in  New  York ;  to  John  Jay,  who 
said  that  he  "  had  no  desire  to  conceal  the  opinion  that  to 
involve  the  Tories  in  indiscriminate  punishment  and  ruin 
would  be  an  instance  of  unnecessary  rigour  and  unmanly 
revenge  without  a  parallel  except  in  the  annals  of  religious 
rage  in  the  time  of  bigotry  and  blindness."  The  loyalis -j 
exiles  peopled  Nova  Scotia,  New  Brunswick,  and  Uppe;.* 
Canada  with  enemies  of  the  new  Republic,  and  if  a  power 
hostile  to  the  Republic  should  ever  be  formed  unde: 
European  influence  in  the  north  of  the  continent,  tho 
Americans  will  owe  it  to  their  ancestors  who  refused 
amnesty  to  the  vanquished  in  civil  war. 

1783.  By  the  treaty  of  peace,  Great  Britain  not  only  recognized 
the  independence  of  her  colonies  but  gave  them,  what 
France  was  not  very  willing  and  Spain  was  very  unwilling 
to  give,  unlimited  extension  to  the  westward  over  the 
territory  which  her  arms  had  won  from  France.  Canada, 
her  bond  of  honour  to  the  loyalists  compelled  her  to 
retain.  In  the  course  of  the  negotiations  the  hollowness 
of  the  league  of  hatred  between  America  and  the  European 
enemies  of  England  appeared.  France,  as  the  American 
envoys  thought,  played  America  false,  and  the  Americans 
were  guilty  towards  France  of  what  they  admitted  to  be 
a  breach  of  diplomatic  courtesy  while  France  called  it  by 
a  harder  name.  "  It  is  now  substantially  proved,"  says  a 
recent  American  writer  of  eminence,  "  that  the  unmixed 
motive  of  the  French  cabinet  in  secretly  encouraging  the 
revolted  colonies,  before  open  war  had  broken  out  between 
France  and  England,  had  been  only  to  weaken  the  power 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,  AND   UNION.  113 

and  sap  the  permanent  resources  of  the  natural  and  appar 
ently  eternal  enemy  of  France."  To  seize  the  opportunity 
of  crippling  a  powerful  enemy  was  the  avowed  aim  of 
Vergennes  in  urging  his  king  to  go  to  war.  The  conduct 
of  negotiations  on  the  British  part  fell  at  first  to  the  lot  of 
Shelburne,  the  most  liberal  statesman  of  his  day,  who  had 
ardently  desired  re-union  and  who  now,  with  young  Pitt 
by  his  side,  sought  to  make  the  settlement  with  the  colonies 
a  treaty  not  of  peace  only  but  of  reconciliation,  dividing 
the  imperial  heritage  without  destroying  the  moral  unity 
of  the  race.  Had  Shelburne's  policy  prevailed,  there  would 
have  been  no  war  of  1812,  there  would  have  been  no 
fisheries  question,  nor  Behring  Sea  controversy.  But 
Shelburne's  government  was  overthrown  by  the  factious 
ambition  of  Fox,  with  whom  it  is  painful  to  say  went 
Burke.  A  demand  for  compensation  to  the  loyalists  Con 
gress,,  unable  to  deny  its  justice,  put  off  with  an  ironical 
recommendation  of  compliance  to  the  States,  whose  reso 
lution  it  knew.  England  gave  the  loyalists  more  than 
three  millions  and  a  half  sterling  if  we  include  the  pen 
sions  and  half  pay,  and  new  homes  to  those  that  chose 
them  under  her  flag.  The  recognition  of  private  debts 
was,  thanks  to  the  honesty  and  wisdom  of  John  Adams, 
though  not  without  great  difficulty,  obtained. 

The  political  separation  of  the  colonies  from  the  mother 
country,  once  more,  was  inevitable.  Not  even  the  most 
fervid  imperialist  can  imagine  the  sixty-five  millions  of 
the  United  States  remaining  dependent  on  the  thirty-five 
millions  of  the  British  Islands.  No  English  statesman  in 
the  present  day  could  think  without  shuddering  of  such  a 
task  as  that  of  governing  New  England  across  the  Atlantic. 
But  by  right-minded  men  the  violence  of  the  separation 


114  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

must  ever  be  deplored.  The  least  part  of  the  evil  wat 
the  material  havoc.  Of  this  the  larger  share  fell  as  usuaJ 
upon  the  country  which  was  the  scene  of  war.  England 
came  out  at  last  with  her  glory  little  tarnished.  She  hac 
yielded  not  to  America,  but  to  America,  France,  Spain,  anc 
Holland  combined.  That  tremendous  coalition  she  hac. 
faced,  the  national  spirit  of  her  people  which  had  not  beeu 
thoroughly  awakened  by  the  war  against  her  own  colonists, 
rising  to  do  battle  with  her  foreign  enemies  ;  and  her  flag 
floated  in  its  pride  once  more  over  the  waters  which  were 
the  scene  of  Rodney's  victory,  and  on  that  unconquered 
rock  beneath  which  the  Spaniard  received  his  share  of  tho 
profits  of  the  league.  While  she  was  losing  nominal 
empire  in  America,  illustrious  adventurers  had  enlarged 
her  real  empire  in  Hindustan.  Of  all  the  consequences, 
the  worst  to  Great  Britain  was  that  the  oligarchy  which 
ruled  in  Ireland  was  enabled,  by  taking  advantage  of  her 
peril,  for  a  time  to  cast  off  imperial  control  and  to  set  up 
an  independence  which  ended  in  the  catastrophe  of  '98. 
The  loss  of  her  colonial  dependencies  in  itself  was  clear 
gain,  political,  military,  and  commercial.  Their  trade,  her 
share  of  it,  and  her  profit  from  it,  increased  after  their 
political  emancipation.  She  was  thus  repaid  what  she 
had  expended  in  the  war.  But  she  lost  what  was  more 
valuable  than  glory,  empire,  or  the  profits  of  trade,  the  love 
of  her  colonists,  and  in  place  of  it  incurred  their  intense 
and  enduring,  though  unreasonable  and  unworthy,  hatred. 
The  colonists  by  their  emancipation  won  commercial  as 
well  as  fiscal  freedom,  and  the  still  more  precious  freedom 
of  development,  political,  social,  and  spiritual.  They  were 
fairly  launched  on  the  course  of  their  own  destiny,  which 
diverged  widely  from  that  of  a  monarchical  and  aristocratic 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  115 

realm  of  the  old  world.  But  their  liberty  was  baptized  in 
civil  blood,  it  was  cradled  in  confiscation  and  massacre,  its 
natal  hour  was  the  hour  of  exile  for  thousands  of  worthy 
citizens  whose  conservatism,  though  its  ascendancy  was 
not  desirable,  might  as  all  true  liberals  will  allow  have 
usefully  leavened  the  republican  mass.  A  fallacious  ideal 
of  political  character  was  set  up.  Patriotism  was  identified 
with  rebellion,  and  the  young  republic  received  a  revolu 
tionary  bias,  of  the  opposite  of  which  it  stood  in  need. 
The  sequel  of  the  Boston  Tea  Party  was  the  firing  011  Fort 
Sumter. 

Another  consequence  was  the  severance  of  Canada  from 
the  United  States  and  a  schism  of  the  English-speaking 
race  on  the  North  American  continent,  opening  the  way, 
which  unity  would  have  closed,  for  the  introduction  of 
international  enmities,  of  a  balance  of  power,  and  of  war. 
Statesmanship  is  now  labouring  against  an  accumulation 
of  difficulties  to  undo  the  evil  work  done  a  century  ago  by 
denial  of  amnesty  to  the  vanquished  in  civil  strife. 

France  in  gratifying  her  hatred  of  England  became 
bankrupt.  Bankruptcy  brought  revolution,  and  the  French  1789. 
revolution  brought  a  deluge  of  woe,  not  only  on  France 
but  on  mankind.  Up  to  that  time  the  spirit  of  philosophy, 
philanthropy,  and  reform  had  by  a  peaceful  movement 
been  gaining  possession  of  the  governments  of  Europe. 
An  era  of  improvement  without  convulsions  seemed  to  be 
dawning.  Young  Pitt  when  he  came  into  power  saw  noth-  1784. 
ing  before  him  but  peace  and  reduction  of  taxes.  He 
looked  forward  to  the  total  abolition  of  customs  and  to 
free  trade,  within  sight  of  which  the  world  has  never  since 
come.  The  American  revolution  by  the  financial  ruin 
which  it  brought  on  France,  by  the  revolutionary  spirit 


116  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

which  it  infused  into  her,  and  by  the  violence  for  which  b 
gave  the  signal,  changed  the  scene,  and  Jacobinism,  terror 
ism,  reactionary  despotism,  militarism,  incarnations  of  the 
same  malignant  spirit,  were  let  loose  upon  a  world  which 
they  still  distract  and  ravage.  Misfortune  pursued  even 
the  persons  of  those  most  concerned.  The  French  king, 
whose  weakness  had  consented  to  the  war,  and  his  queen, 

1793.  whose  folly  had  encouraged  it,  mounted  the  scaffold  before 
the  unpitying  eyes  if  not  amid  the  plaudits  of  the  Ameri 
can  democracy  which  they  had  saved.  D'Estaing  having 
helped  the  queen  to  her  doom,  himself  followed  her,  and 
Lafayette,  after  dancing  for  a  moment  on  the  top  of  tha 
revolutionary  wave,  was  overturned  by  genuine  revolution  ..- 
ists  and  flung  out  into  disappointment  and  impotence. 

The  good  effects  of  the  American  revolt  on  British 
politics  have  it  would  seem  been  overrated.  Whatever 
Chatham  or  any  one  else  might  say  in  his  oratoric  mood, 
there  was  little  danger  of  the  enslavement  of  Britain  by 
means  of  a  colonial  stamp  act  or  a  colonial  duty  on  tea. 
For  that  the  Whigs  and  the  people  were  too  strong.  On 
the  other  hand,  a  few  years  after  YorktOAvn  the  king  was 
able  to  set  his  foot  on  the  neck  of  the  Whig  party  by  his 

1784.  personal  nomination  of  Pitt,  and  Toryism  reigned  thence 
forth  with  hardly  a  break  for  forty  years.  England's 
colonial  system  also  remained  unchanged  till  with  all  the 
other  parts  of  British  government  it  felt  the  tide  of  return 
ing  Liberalism,  which  carried  the  Reform  Bill.  In  truth, 
defeat  in  anything  like  a  British  cause  was  not  likely  to 
entail  on  the  monarch  a  forfeiture  of  British  hearts,  and  it 
was  in  a  British  cause  that  Rodney  and  Eliot  at  all  events 
had  conquered,  while  it  was  before  French  arms  that  Corn- 
wallis  had  fallen. 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND    UNION.  117 

What  is  called  the  American  revolution  was  not  truly  a 
revolution  but  a  separation.  The  colonists  had  taken  up 
arms  as  they  averred  for  chartered  right,  not  for  constitu 
tional  change.  Nevertheless  a  gradual  revolution  ensued. 
The  colonists  had  broken  away  from  monarchy,  they  had 
learned  to  hate  it  and  everything  connected  with  it,  they 
had  been  steeped  in  republican  sentiment ;  they  had  ex 
pelled  the  monarchical,  aristocratic,  and  hierarchical  ele 
ments  and  tendencies  of  the  community.  So  strong  had 
the  feeling  already  become  against  anything  hereditary  or 
aristocratic,  that  the  foundation  of  "  The  Cincinnati,"  an 
hereditary  brotherhood  of  the  officers  who  had  fought  in 
the  war  and  their  descendants,  brought  on  a  storm.  From 
the  British  Parliament  supreme  power  had  passed  to  the 
legislatures  of  the  several  States.  The  States  had  reor 
ganized  themselves  in  the  cases  where  it  was  necessary  on 
a  republican  footing.  Their  constitutions  after  some  ex 
perimental  oscillations  assumed  in  process  of  time  nearly 
the  same  form,  each  having  as  its  executive,  in  the  place 
of  a  royal  governor  or  the  vice-regent  of  its  proprietary,  an 
elective  governor  with  a  veto  not  absolute  like  that  of  the 
crown  but  suspensive,  and  a  legislature  consisting  of  two 
houses,  a  Senate  which  succeeded  to  the  old  Council,  and 
an  Assembly;  both  houses  being  elective,  but  the  con 
ditions  of  election  to  the  Senate  and  the  tenure  of  seats  in 
it  being  such  as  to  render  it  rather  a  conservative  and  re 
vising  body,  while  the  Assembly  was  the  direct  expression 
of  the  popular  will.  This  was  in  fact  the  old  English 
model  as  it  was  understood  to  be,  with  the  omission  of  the 
hereditary  element.  In  almost  all  the  states  there  had 
been  up  to  that  time  a  property  qualification  of  some  sort 
for  the  franchise.  Gradually  in  the  succeeding  years  these 


118  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

qualifications  were  abolished  and  manhood  suffrage  pre 
vailed.  This,  apart  from  deliberate  policy,  the  bidding  of 
politicians  against  each  other  for  popular  support  was  sure 
to  bring  to  pass.  The  elective  principle  was  unhappily  ex 
tended  in  time  by  most  of  the  states  to  the  judiciary, 
Georgia  setting  the  bad  example  which  Massachusetts  was 
wise  enough  always  to  refuse  to  follow.  The  common  law 
of  England  remained  and  still  remains  the  basis  of  Ameri 
can  law.  Even  the  technicalities  of  its  pleading  system 
have  in  some  American  states  partly  survived  their  aboli 
tion  in  the  old  country.  But  the  legal  supports  of  terri 
torial  aristocracy,  primogeniture  and  entail,  disappeared. 
With  them  departed  the  last  relics  of  the  manorial  system : 
that  of  freehold  farms  —  territorial  democracy,  as  it  has 
been  called  —  everywhere  prevailed,  and  New  York  ceased 
to  pay  homage,  ultimately  she  ceased  to  pay  quit-rents,  to 
her  patroons.  The  Church  establishments,  alike  that  of 
Congregationalism  in  Massachusetts  and  that  of  Angli 
canism  in  the  Southern  and  Middle  States,  passed  away 
and  gave  place  to  religious  equality,  though  a  state  profes 
sion  of  Christianity  with  some  legal  safeguards  for  religion 
lingered  on  and  lingers  still,  especially  with  regard  to 
the  observance  of  Sunday.  Congregational  establishment 
in  the  North  somewhat  survived  Anglican  establishment 
in  the  South,  because  the  first  was  popular,  the  second 
aristocratic.  Churches  which  had  been  established  took  up 
their  position  as  free  churches,  a  process  in  which  the 
Church  of  England  marked  her  singularly  political  charac 
ter,  for  the  English  episcopate  could  consecrate  no  one  as 
bishop  who  had  not  taken  the  oath  to  the  crown,  and  for 
the  consecration  of  an  American  bishop  it  was  necessary  to 
have  recourse  to  the  free  Anglican  episcopate  of  Scotland. 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND    UNION.  119 

Apart  from  specific  change,  constitutional,  legal,  or 
ecclesiastical,  there  Avas  a  general  change  of  ideas  as  to 
the  origin,  foundation,  and  authority  of  government.  The 
court  which  had  been  paid  to  the  king  was  henceforth  to 
be  paid  to  the  sovereign  people.  To  the  sovereign  people 
all  loyalty  was  henceforth  due.  Against  the  sovereign 
people  only  could  treason  be  committed.  That  treason 
could  be  committed  against  the  sovereign  people  even 
more  easily  than  against  a  king,  was  the  opinion  of  Samuel 
Adams,  who  in  opposing  the  extension  of  mercy  to  some 
convicted  insurgents  laid  it  down  that  in  monarchies  the 
crime  of  treason  or  rebellion  might  admit  of  being  par 
doned  or  lightly  punished,  but  the  man  who  dared  to  rebel 
against  the  laws  of  a  republic  ought  to  suffer  death. 

The  five  years  which  followed  the  final  separation  of  the 
colonies  from  the  mother  country  have  been  justly  called 
the  critical  period  of  American  history.  Imperial  unity 
had  departed,  national  unity  had  not  taken  its  place.  The 
bond  of  mutual  danger,  weak  enough  even  while  the 
danger  lasted,  had  departed  with  the  return  of  peace. 
Congress,  originally  the  organ  of  a  war  league  and  invested 
only  with  war  or  diplomatic  powers,  was  politically  a 
shadow.  Its  army  had  been  broken  up,  its  currency  had 
lost  all  value,  to  raise  money  it  was  driven  to  such  expedi 
ents  as  drawing  on  its  foreign  ministers  and  selling  the 
drafts  for  cash.  It  was  unable  to  keep  its  word  to  the 
scarred  veterans  who  had  fought  for  it.  Its  financier,  the 
banker-statesman  Robert  Morris,  struggled  with  its  em 
barrassments  nobly  but  in  vain.  It  had  not  the  means  of 
protecting  the  lives  or  property  of  its  citizens  on  the  high 
seas.  A  handful  of  mutineers  turned  it  out  of  doors. 
Reduced  to  ignominious  impotence  at  home  it  could  not 


120  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

command  respect  abroad,  nor  could  England  or  any  foreign 
nation  be  justly  upbraided  by  Americans  with  slighting  a 
government  which  Americans  themselves  almost  spurned. 
Valid  treaties  could  not  be  made  with  a  government  which 
had  no  means  of  punishing  their  infraction.  Seeing  the 
confusion,  some  of  the  army  officers  would  have  made 
Washington  king,  but  he  more  decisively  and  sincerely 
than  Csesar  or  Cromwell  put  away  the  crown.  The  States 
were  scattered  along  nine  hundred  miles  of  coast,  broken 
by  many  impediments  to  travel.  They  had  little  inter 
communication.  Their  interests  and  feelings  were  still 
strongly  local  in  spite  of  their  partnership  and  the  com 
radeship  of  their  soldiers  during  the  war.  Among  the 
public  men  who  had  taken  a  leading  part  in  the  struggle 
for  independence  and  among  the  Continental  veterans 
there  might  be  a  community  of  sentiment,  but  on  the 
whole  the  centrifugal  forces  prevailed  and  were  gaining 
strength.  State  selfishness  manifested  itself  with  violence, 
especially  in  the  case  of  New  York.  It  was  becoming 
fatal  even  to  commercial  unity.  States  fell  foul  of  each 
other.  There  were  disputes  about  territory,  and  in  a  con 
test  between  Pennsylvania  and  Connecticut  for  the  posses- 
1784.  sion  of  Wyoming  that  hapless  settlement  was  a  second 
time  devastated,  and  with  cruelty  only  less  than  that  of 
the  Indians  and  Tories.  Such  a  dissolution  and  such  a 
collapse  of  public  spirit  are  not  the  usual  sequel  of  a 
struggle  for  a  great  cause,  the  tendency  of  which  on  the 
contrary  is  to  elevate,  brace,  and  unite.  Grievances  and 
discontent  were  rife.  Commerce,  almost  ruined  by  the 
maritime  war,  was  now  weltering  in  the  slough  of  a 
debased  paper  currency  into  which  individual  States  were 
wading  deeper  still.  There  was  a  heavy  burden  of  private 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  121 

as  well  as  of  public  debt.  Men  were  being  dragged  to 
debtors'  prisons.  The  community  was  vexed  by  litigation 
and  the  enforcement  of  odious  claims.  Gambling  specula 
tion  flourished,  as  it  always  does  when  the  currency  is 
deranged,  and  the  people  were  incensed  by  the  sight  of  its 
shameful  gains.  The  spirit  of  repudiation  was  abroad. 
Scarcity  appeared  and  food  riots  with  it.  At  length  law- 
loving  Massachusetts  became  the  scene  of  a  dangerous 
rebellion  of  the  indebted  and  suffering  class  under  the 
leadership  of  Daniel  Shays,  formerly  a  captain  in  the  1787. 
Continental  army,  who  in  common  probably  with  many  of 
his  comrades  had  been  reduced  to  want  by  the  failure  of 
the  public  faith. 

Shays'  rebellion  gave  a  salutary  shock.  Anarchy  was 
evidently  at  hand.  To  avert  it  a  convention  met  to 
give  the  country  a  government  by  framing  a  constitution.  1787. 
The  president  of  the  convention  was  Washington,  who, 
the  war  ended,  had  sought  retirement  and  domestic  happi 
ness  at  Mount  Vernon  sincerely  but  in  vain.  Personal 
confidence  in  him  it  was  in  great  measure  that  made  the 
convention  possible  and  enabled  it  to  do  its  work.  Once 
more  and  not  for  the  last  time  he  saved  the  state.  When 
the  servile  dread  of  popular  opinion  which  is  the  bane  of 
popular  government  began  to  show  itself,  he  rose  from  his 
chair  and  said,  "  It  is  too  probable  that  no  plan  we  propose 
will  be  adopted.  Perhaps  another  dreadful  conflict  is  to 
be  sustained.  If  to  please  the  people  we  offer  what  we 
ourselves  disapprove,  how  can  we  afterwards  defend  our 
work  ?  Let  us  raise  a  standard  to  which  the  wise  and  hon 
est  can  repair  ;  the  event  is  in  the  hand  of  God."  "  These 
words,"  says  an  eminent  writer,  "ought  to  be  blazoned  in 
letters  of  gold  and  posted  on  the  wall  of  every  American 


122  THE  UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

assembly  that  shall  meet  to  nominate  a  candidate  or 
declare  a  policy  or  pass  a  law,  so  long  as  the  weakness  of 
human  nature  shall  endure."  If  it  could  only  be  shown 
how  the  politician  is  to  act  in  this  spirit,  while  to  him  the 
pleasure  of  the  changeful  multitude  is  life  and  its  displeas 
ure  is  death  !  The  leading  minds  of  the  convention  were 
Franklin,  Hamilton,  Madison,  Rufus  King,  Robert  Morris, 
Gouverneur  Morris,  Pinckney,  Oliver  Ellsworth,  Elbridge 
Gerry,  James  Wilson,  and  Roger  Sherman  —  sagacious 
and  experienced  men  of  business,  like  the  men  of  whom 
the  American  Senate  is  now  composed,  and  far  unlike  the 
men  to  whose  lot  it  unhappily  fell  to  frame  a  constitution 
for  revolutionary  France.  Jefferson,  the  author  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence,  whose  opinions  were  French 
and  revolutionary  and  whose  influence  had  he  been  present 
would  have  been  great,  was  happily  absent  as  ambassador 
at  Paris.  The  tendency  of  the  American  statesmen  was 
conservative,  their  mission  being  to  avert  dissolution.  That 
their  work  proclaims  their  wisdom,  the  world  declares. 
They  founded,  if  not  the  first  national  republic,  the  first 
which  was  destined  to  endure.  The  republics  of  antiquity 
were  cities,  and  Rome  when  she  became  more  than  a  city 
ceased  to  be  a  republic.  In  the  United  Netherlands  the 
Stadtholderate  was  a  veiled  monarchy.  The  Common 
wealth  of  England  lived  but  for  an  hour,  though  it  left 
what  may  prove  a  valuable  legacy  in  the  Instrument  of 
Government.  The  union  of  the  Swiss  Cantons  was  at 
this  time  not  national  but  federal,  in  the  strict  sense  of 
the  term.  It  has  since  become  national  by  approximation 
to  the  American  model. 

The  problem  which  the  framers  of  the  American  consti 
tution  had  to  solve  was  that  of  reconciling  a  strong  na- 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  123 

tional  government,  which  was  the  aim  of  most  of  them, 
with  the  claims  and  susceptibilities  of  separate  and  in  their 
own  eyes  sovereign  states.  The  solution  of  that  problem 
was  a  nation  with  a  federal  structure.  The  federal  parts 
of  the  constitution  are  the  recognition  of  the  right  of  each 
state  to  self-government  in  regard  to  all  ordinary  matters 
of  legislation  or  administration ;  the  equal  representation 
of  the  states  great  and  small  in  the  Senate,  which  is  placed 
beyond  the  power  of  amendment ;  and  the  election  of  the 
president  through  state  colleges,  the  verdict  of  which  may 
not  coincide  with  that  of  the  majority  of  votes  in  the 
whole  Union  ;  the  last  provision  being  however  of  little 
practical  importance.  It  is  also  declared  in  the  interest  of 
state  right  that  any  power  not  expressly  given  to  the  fed 
eral  government  is  withheld  and  remains  in  the  states  or  in 
the  people.  In  the  group  of  states  with  which  the  framers 
had  to  deal  there  were  differences  of  size  or  importance 
which  rendered  federation  on  an  equal  footing  a  work  of 
difficulty.  Yet  there  was  no  towering  predominance  to 
excite  the  permanent  jealousy  of  the  rest,  as  there  would 
be  if  England  were  federally  united  with  Scotland,  Wales, 
and  Ireland.  Whether  the  constitution  was  a  compact,  as 
parties  to  which  the  states  retained  their  independent  exist 
ence,  or  an  incorporating  union  in  which  the  independent 
existence  of  the  states  was  merged,  was  a  question  left  by 
the  framers  to  settle  itself  and  which  was  ultimately  decided 
by  the  sword.  What  is  certain  is  that  Congress  was  not 
made,  like  the  British  Parliament,  a  sovereign  power. 
The  sovereignty  remained  either  in  the  states  or  in  the 
united  people. 

The  national  part  of  the  constitution  was  not  struck  out 
at  a  heat  as  misdirected  eulogy  avers,  but  was  framed  like 


124  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

the  constitutions  of  the  several  states  on  the  English 
model,  as  the  English  model  was  in  law  and  was  still 
imagined  in  fact  to  be  even  by  the  English  themselves, 
with  an  executive  head  and  a  legislature  divided  into  two 
co-ordinate  branches.  The  elective  president  was  the 
republican  substitute  for  the  hereditary  king,  and  was 
invested  with  the  executive  powers,  political,  diplomatic, 
and  military,  which  the  king  was  still  supposed  to  possess. 
The  military  command  however  was  to  be  direct  only  in 
the  case  of  the  standing  army  ;  of  the  militia,  the  command 
ers  were  to  be  the  governors  of  the  states,  to  whom  the 
president's  requisition  was  to  be  addressed.  The  Senate 
was  the  republican  and  elective  House  of  Lords,  and  was 
like  it  restrained  from  originating  money  bills.  The 
House  of  Representatives  was  the  House  of  Commons,  the 
direct  expression  of  the  popular  will,  as  well  as  in  this 
case,  the  organ  of  the  nation,  while  the  Senate  was  the  organ 
of  the  states.  The  Senators  were  to  be  elected  by  the  state 
legislatures  for  six  years,  the  members  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  were  to  be  elected  by  the  people  for  only 
two  years ;  and  the  Senate  was  expected,  both  from  the 
mode  of  its  election  and  from  the  length  of  its  term,  to  be 
like  the  upper  house  of  the  British  Parliament  a  conserva 
tive  and  revising  body.  The  qualification  for  the  national 
suffrage  was  to  be  the  same  as  that  required  for  electors 
of  the  most  numerous  branch  of  the  legislature  in  each 
state,  an  enactment  of  which,  leaders  and  parties  bidding 
against  each  other  for  popular  support,  manhood  suffrage 
was  the  certain  offspring.  The  presidency,  after  much 
debate  and  many  changes  of  mind,  was  made  tenable  for 
four  years  with  the  power  of  re-election,  the  exercise  of 
which  was  presently  limited  by  fixed  custom  to  a  double 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  125 

term.  The  election  was  not  intended  to  be  popular;  it 
was  vested  in  colleges  of  electors,  sage  citizens  it  was  sup 
posed  they  would  be,  one  college  for  each  state.  But  the 
election  of  these  colleges  for  the  special  purpose  inevitably 
became  a  mandate,  and  a  presidential  election  practically 
by  manhood  suffrage  is  now  the  most  extensive  display  of 
popular  sovereignty  in  the  world.  The  president  was 
invested  with  a  suspensive  veto  in  place  of  the  veto  nomi 
nally  absolute  of  the  British  king,  while  a  share  was  given 
to  the  Senate  in  the  executive  power  by  making  its  con 
sent  necessary  to  official  appointments  and  to  treaties. 
These  were  deviations  from  the  revered  but  impracticable 
principle  of  Montesquieu,  who  had  laid  it  down  that  the 
complete  separation  of  the  executive,  legislative,  and  judi 
cial  powers  from  each  other  was  the  only  sure  pledge  of 
freedom. 

On  the  other  hand,  whether  in  deference  to  Montesquieu 
or  to  the  political  purism  which  had  given  birth  to  place 
Bills  in  the  old  country,  ministers  of  state  were  excluded 
from  the  legislature.  Thus  a  turn  was  given  to  the  parli 
amentary  system  in  America  different  from  that  which  had 
been  taken  by  the  parliamentary  system  in  England,  though 
almost  without  the  knowledge  of  Englishmen  themselves. 
Cabinet  government  was  precluded.  Instead  of  a  ministry 
responsible  to  the  legislature,  and  dependent  for  existence 
on  its  vote,  America  has  a  ministry  independent  of  the 
legislature  and  irremovable  during  its  term  of  four  years. 
Instead  of  the  control  exercised  over  legislation  by  the 
ministers  sitting  in  Parliament,  America  has  controlling 
committees  nominated  in  the  House  of  Representatives  by 
the  Speaker,  who  is  thus  not  merely  the  chairman  but  the 
party  leader  of  the  House.  In  the  Senate  there  can  hardly 


126  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

be  said  to  be  any  initiative  or  control,  except  that  of  party 
organization  or  individual  influence. 

Of  government  by  party,  in  which  their  settlement  was 
destined  to  result,  the  framers  of  the  constitution  appear 
not  to  have  thought,  though  they  had  an  example  of  it 
before  them  in  the  British  Parliament.  That  organized 
party  would  be  the  dominant  force  acting  under  the  forms 
of  the  institutions  which  they  framed  did  not,  so  far  as  we 
can  see,  occur  to  their  minds.  In  this  most  momentous 
respect  their  foresight  failed. 

The  states  were  prohibited  from  laying  import  or  transit 
duties  on  each  other's  goods.  Internal  free  trade  was  thus 

O 

secured  to  the  whole  of  the  continent  occupied  by  the 
United  States.  This  was  practically  the  greatest  of  all  the 
measures  of  free  trade  in  commercial  history. 

For  the  amendment  of  the  constitution  two  processes 
were  assigned,  the  initiative  being  given  either  to  two-thirds 
of  both  Houses  of  Congress  or  to  the  legislatures  of  two- 
thirds  of  the  states.  Both  processes  are  so  difficult,  espe 
cially  when  the  Union  is  divided  into  parties,  as  to  carry 
conservatism  almost  to  the  length  of  immobility.  There 
was  no  amendment  during  a  period  of  sixty  years. 

The  interpretation  and  legal  guardianship  of  the  consti 
tution  were  vested  in  a  Supreme  Court,  the  judges  being 
appointed  by  the  President  with  consent  of  the  Senate. 

In  the  constitution,  or  in  additions  soon  after  made  to  it 
by  way  of  amendment,  are  provisions  which  taken  together 
constitute  a  republican  Bill  of  Rights.  A  republican  con 
stitution  is  guaranteed  to  each  of  the  states,  no  titles  of 
nobility  can  be  granted,  no  religion  can  be  established,  no 
religious  tests  for  office  can  be  imposed ;  speech  and  the 
press  are  to  be  forever  free,  liberty  of  public  meeting  and 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  127 

of  petition  are  secured,  trial  by  jury  is  to  be  every  man's 
right ;  acts  of  attainder,  ex  post  facto  laws,  or  laws  impair 
ing  the  faith  of  contracts  are  not  to  be  passed ;  no  private 
property  is  to  be  taken  by  the  state  without  compensation ; 
that  military  usurpation  may  be  rendered  impossible,  all 
freemen  are  permitted  to  carry  arms. 

The  adoption  of  a  federal  senate  with  a  national  house 
of  representatives  was  a  compromise  for  the  sake  of  union 
between  the  claims  of  the  states  and  those  of  the  nation. 
The  clauses  of  the  constitution  respecting  slavery  were  a 
compromise  for  the  sake  of  union  between  the  freedom 
which  prevailed  in  the  North  and  the  slavery  which  pre 
vailed  in  the  South.  In  the  northern  and  central  states 
since  the  revolution  emancipation  had  been  making  rapid 
progress.  Vermont  led  the  way  in  legislative  prohibition. 
Massachusetts  judicially  applied  to  the  negro  the  principle 
of  equal  rights  embodied  in  the  Declaration  of  Indepen 
dence,  much  as  in  England  slavery  had  been  judicially 
interdicted  in  the  case  of  Somerset.  Elsewhere  liberal 
sentiment  had  practically  prevailed.  In  the  southern 
states  there  were  politicians  who  saw  the  danger  of  slav 
ery  and  philanthropists  who  condemned  its  iniquity.  But 
the  economical  conditions  which  fostered  it  were  too 
strong  and  were  destined  soon  to  be  fatally  reinforced. 
In  the  apportionment  of  representation  the  South  was 
allowed  by  the  Fathers  of  the  constitution  to  count  three- 
fifths  of  its  slaves.  A  fugitive  slave  law  was  introduced 
and  the  Union  is  pledged  to  lend  its  forces  for  the  suppres 
sion  of  slave  insurrection.  The  existence  of  the  slave 
trade  was  secured  for  twenty  years.  Soon  after  the  adop 
tion  of  the  constitution,  Kentucky  was  admitted  as  a  slave 
state  and  two  fugitive  slaves  were  arrested  at  Boston. 


128  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

The  names  "  slavery,"  "  slave,"  and  "  slave-trade "  are 
avoided ;  those  of  "  persons  held  to  service  or  labour," 
"  importation  and  migration  "  are  used  instead.  But  the 
veil  of  language  betrays  consciousness  without  hiding  the 
guilt.  Compromises  of  expediency  may  well  be  wise,  com 
promises  of  principle  always  fail.  We  know  now  of  what 
upas  tree  the  germ  was  planted  here.  This  was  the  first 
of  three  great  compromises  with  slavery  for  the  sake  of 
union. 

The  convention  sat  with  closed  doors,  as  every  assembly 
must  if  it  means  really  to  deliberate,  not  to  talk  to  the 
gallery  and  the  reporters.  In  this  case  it  was  most  neces 
sary  that  the  debate  should  be  perfectly  free,  and  that  the 
work  should  come  complete  before  the  people.  But  the 
substance  of  the  discussion  has  been  preserved  in  authentic 
notes  and  nothing  in  political  archives  is  more  important. 
In  overcoming  the  opposition,  constitutional  or  arising 
from  the  local  fears  and  jealousies  of  different  states,  there 
was  abundant  work  for  personal  authority,  statesmanship, 
address,  and  eloquence  both  of  the  tongue  and  pen. 
Among  the  opponents  of  union  were  Samuel  Adams 
and  Patrick  Henry,  the  latter  of  whom,  if  the  evidence 
of  his  opponents  is  to  be  believed,  appealed  without 
scruple  to  all  motives.  Pamphleteering  abounded  on  both 
sides  and  the  controversy  gave  birth  to  one  memorable 
work,  "  The  Federalist,"  of  Hamilton,  Madison,  and  Jay. 
Unluckily  "  The  Federalist"  is  mainly  taken  up  with  allay 
ing  the  fears,  proved  by  the  event  to  be  groundless,  of 
those  who  fancied  that  the  power  of  government  would  be 
too  great,  while  with  the  real  dangers,  democratic  passion, 
demagogism,  and  factions,  it  omits  to  deal. 

Provision  was  made  by  the  constitution  for  the   govern- 


ii.  REVOLUTION,   INDEPENDENCE,   AND   UNION.  129 

ment.  Provision  for  expansion  had  been  made  by  a 
resolution  of  the  old  Continental  Congress  which  de 
clared  that  the  demesne  or  territorial  lands  "should  be 
disposed  of  for  the  common  benefit  of  the  United  States, 
and  be  settled  and  formed  into  distinct  republican  states, 
which  shall  become  members  of  the  federal  union,  and 
have  the  same  rights  of  sovereignty,  freedom,  and  indepen 
dence  as  the  other  states."  Virginia  and  other  states  had 
conceded  to  the  confederacy  the  vast  tracts  to  which  they 
laid  claim  between  the  Alleghanies  and  the  Mississippi, 
and  for  the  settlement  and  political  organization  of  these 
tracts  an  ordinance  had  been  made  in  1787  second  in 
importance  only  to  the  constitution.  The  nomination  of 
a  governor  by  the  president  and  the  election  of  a  rudi 
mentary  legislature  formed  the  provisional  process  by 
which  the  territory  was  to  be  prepared  for  admission  as  a 
state  to  the  Union  by  an  Act  of  Congress  when  its  popu 
lation  should  have  become  sufficient,  and  provided  Con 
gress  approved  its  constitution.  By  a  memorable  article 
of  the  ordinance  slavery  was  prohibited  north  of  the  Ohio. 
Thus  marshalled  by  law  and  order,  the  host  of  settlement 
and  civilization  set  forth  on  its  westward  march.  Human 
ity  had  advanced  since  the  migrations  of  the  Huns  and 
Tartars.  A  system  of  dealing  with  the  public  lands 
which  should  treat  them,  in  their  primary  aspect,  not  as  a 
national  estate  of  which  a  market  was  to  be  made,  but  as  a 
field  for  settlement,  and  open  them  on  the  easiest  terms  to 
the  settler,  was  needed  to  complete  the  policy.  In  time  it 
came. 


CHAPTER   III. 

KEPTJBLIC. 

1789    TITASHINGTON  became  President  by  acclamation.     At 
1797.  the  end  of  his  term  of  four  years  he  with  unfeigned 

reluctance  consented  to  re-election.  For  eight  years  Ii3 
was  in  power  far  more  of  a  king  than  the  crowned  King  cf 
England;  he  not  only  reigned,  but  governed.  He  eve  i 
kept  something  like  royal  state,  he  rode  in  a  coach-anc.- 
four,  at  the  opening  of  Congress  in  a  coach-and-six.  He 
treated  admission  to  his  levies  and  parties  as  a  matter  cf 
etiquette,  unlike  his  democratic  successors,  who  are  com 
pelled  to  receive  all  comers  at  all  times  and  to  allow  the 
millions  to  take  them  by  the  hand.  His  birthday  was 
kept  like  that  of  a  king.  His  wife  was  called  Lady 
Washington,  the  article  in  the  constitution  against  titles 
of  nobility  notwithstanding.  On  state  occasions  he  wore 
court  dress.  In  all  this,  however,  he  was  not  indulging 
personal  pride,  but  doing  what  he  thought  was  incumbent 
on  the  head  of  the  nation,  for  he  was  always  a  sincere 
republican,  though  of  the  aristocratic  type.  His  state, 
though  modest  and  certainly  covering  no  designs  of  ag 
grandizement,  did  not  fail  to  give  umbrage  to  jealous 
democracy,  which  took  arms  at  once  against  the  proposals 
to  confer  on  the  President  such  a  title  as  "  Highness,"  or 
to  put  his  head  on  the  coins. 

130 


CHAP.  in.  REPUBLIC.  131 

To  the  character  and  authority  of  the  head  of  the  nation 
must  largely  be  ascribed  the  success  of  the  constitution, 
which  at  first  had  little  hold  upon  the  people.  At  the 
first  session  of  Congress  eight  weeks  elapsed  after  the 
appointed  day  before  enough  members  arrived  to  form  a 
quorum.  Before  the  end  of  Washington's  term  the  con 
stitution  had  firmly  taken  root,  the  authority  and  dignity 
of  Congress  were  assured,  and  it  had  drawn  to  it  the 
ability,  the  ambition,  and  the  political  life  of  the  nation. 
From  the  outset  there  was  a  full  measure  of  practical 
sagacity  in  both  houses.  The  Senate  being  the  upper 
chamber  and  the  tenure  of  its  members  being  six  years, 
while  that  of  those  of  the  House  of  Representatives  was 
only  two,  it  presently  drew  the  higher  statesmanship  to 
itself.  It  was  always  more  conservative  and  at  first  sat 
with  closed  doors. 

Washington's  wisdom  was  that  of  judgment  rather  than 
that  of  forecast.  He  seems  to  have  had  no  inkling  of  the 
course  which,  under  the  elective  system,  affairs  would 
really  take.  Party,  the  power  of  the  future,  his  own 
breast  being  absolutely  free  from  it,  he  regarded  as  a  pass 
ing  malady  in  others,  and  thought  he  could  subdue  it  by 
uniting  in  his  cabinet  the  leaders  of  the  opposite  schools 
of  politics,  Hamilton  and  Jefferson.  But  from  the  irrecon 
cilable  enmity  of  these  two  men,  and  the  ultimate  retire 
ment  of  Jefferson,  he  might  have  seen  what  would  come 
whenever  his  own  supremacy  was  withdrawn.  Each  was 
the  head  of  a  party  in  course  of  formation  ;  Hamilton 
of  the  Federalists,  the  party  of  strong  government  and 
English  leaning;  Jefferson  of  the  democratic  republicans, 
the  party  of  closely  circumscribed  government,  and  of 
sympathy  with  France. 


132  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

Hamilton,  the  Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  by  general 
consent,  ranks  first  in  ability  of  American  statesmen,  at 
least  amongst  those  of  the  old  school.  It  is  to  him  that 
hostile  critics  of  American  statesmanship  have  special 
reference  when  they  say  that  the  transformation  of  Rome 
by  Augustus  has  been  reversed,  and  that  what  was  at 
first  an  edifice  of  marble  has  been  turned  into  an  edi 
fice  of  brick.  He  was  not  a  native  patriot,  but  had  been 
transplanted  to  the  colony  of  New  York  from  a  crown 
colony  in  the  West  Indies,  the  sentiments  of  which  were 
essentially  monarchical  and  aristocratic.  At  a  New  Yoik 
dinner  he  replied  to  a  democratic  sentiment  by  striking 
his  hand  on  the  table  and  saying,  "Your  people,  Sir,  your 
people  is  a  great  beast."  Though  he  meant  beast  no  doubt 
in  the  Platonic  sense  the  sentiment  which  he  expressed 
was  not  worship  of  the  people.  Ambition,  as  he  frankly 
admitted  to  himself,  was  his  guiding  star.  At  the  open 
ing  of  the  revolution  he  seems  to  have  chosen  the  path  to 
which  his  star  guided  him,  coolly  and  without  fanaticism, 
while  he  showed  his  moderation  as  well  as  his  generosity 
and  courage  by  protecting  a  royalist  against  the  fury  of  a 
revolutionary  mob.  Joining  Washington's  staff  and  bo- 
coming  military  secretary,  he  displayed  precocious  ability 
as  a  negotiator  in  delicate  affairs  and  as  a  writer  of  de 
spatches,  at  the  same  time  distinguishing  himself  in  the 
field.  As  a  witness  of  the  military  mal-administration  of 
Congress  and  the  consequent  sufferings  of  the  army,  he 
must  have  had  the  need  of  a  strong  and  capable  govern 
ment  forcibly  impressed  upon  his  mind.  The  nobleness  of 
his  soul  was  shown  in  his  sympathy  with  Andre*,  and  more 
practically  when  the  war  was  over  by  declaring  for 
amnesty  and  gallantly  stemming  the  tide  of  vindictive 


III. 


REPUBLIC.  133 


persecution  in  New  York.  When  the  time  came  for 
bringing  order  out  of  the  political  chaos  which  followed 
the  revolution,  his  was  the  leading  and  informing  spirit. 
He  was  the  most  zealous  promoter  of  the  constitutional 
union,  and  as  the  principal  writer  in  "  The  Federalist,"  its 
foremost  defender.  Though  New  York  was  his  state,  not 
being  a  native  of  it  he  could  rise  above  its  narrow  interests 
and  be  a  citizen  of  the  Union.  To  exalt  the  Union  above 
the  States  and  enlarge  the  authority  of  the  central  govern 
ment  was  his  steadfast  aim.  By  his  opponents  he  was 
accused  of  a  design  to  introduce  monarchy  and  aristocracy. 
He  was  a  man  of  too  much  sense  either  to  suppose  this 
possible  or  to  pursue  a  chimera.  But  though  a  loyal 
republican  he  was  no  democrat.  He  would  have  been 
more  at  home  in  the  place  of  Turgot  or  Pitt  than  in  the 
service  of  the  multitude.  His  belief  in  the  wisdom  of  the 
people,  was  limited,  and  he  detested  mob  rule.  He  had 
insight  enough  to  discern,  and  frankness  enough  to  avow 
his  opinion,  that  something  which  was  called  corruption 
was  almost  inseparable  from  the  working  of  parliamentary 
institutions.  Becoming  Secretary  of  the  Treasury  under 
Washington,  he  with  wonderful  ability  got  the  finances, 
the  state  of  which  had  seemed  desperate,  into  order, 
averted  bankruptcy  and  repudiation,  induced  Congress 
not  only  to  meet  the  federal  debt,  but,  what  was  much 
more  difficult,  to  assume  the  war  debts  of  the  States, 
funded  the  entire  debt  and  made  provision  for  the  pay 
ment  of  the  interest,  restored  the  national  credit,  the 
soundness  of  the  currency,  and  with  them,  commerce  and 
prosperity.  Stock-jobbing  there  could  not  fail  to  be  in 
a  great  financial  transition.  "  Scripo-phobia  "  raged  for  a 
season.  But  Hamilton  did  nothing  to  encourage  it,  and 


134  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

his  own  hands  were  clean.  In  Webster's  words,  for  once 
florid,  "  he  smote  the  rock  of  the  national  resources,  he 
touched  the  dead  corpse  of  the  public  credit  which  sprang 
upon  its  feet."  "The  fabled  birth  of  Minerva  from  the 
brain  of  Jove  was  hardly  more  sudden  or  more  perfect  than 
that  of  the  financial  system  of  the  United  States  from  the 
conceptions  of  Alexander  Hamilton."  In  doing  all  this 
he  was  called  upon  to  display  force  of  character  and 
ascendancy  over  men  not  less  than  financial  skill.  Among 
his  measures  was  the  creation  of  a  national  bank,  and  in 
this,  as  in  his  whole  policy,  he  had  not  only  the  immediate 
end  but  the  strengthening  of  the  government  in  view. 
His  youthfulness  at  the  time  of  his  great  success  make? 
him  almost  a  counterpart  of  Pitt.  From  the  economical 
fallacies  of  his  day  he  was  not  entirely  free.  His  tariff 
was  protectionist,  though  only  to  a  moderate  extent,  and 
it  practically  affirmed,  apparently  without  constitutional 
sanction,  the  power  of  Congress  to  impose  taxes  for  tilt- 
purpose  of  fostering  particular  trades  as  well  as  for  that 
of  raising  a  revenue.  Otherwise  his  economical  and  finan 
cial  views  were  sound,  and  he  owed  their  soundness 
mainly  to  his  own  genius.  His  powers  of  exposition  were 
also  of  the  highest  order,  though  as  a  popular  orator  he 
did  not  attempt  to  shine.  His  purity  was  above  suspicion; 
the  attempts  of  his  enemies  to  impeach  it  totally  failed. 
Equally  above  suspicion  was  his  patriotism,  and  if  in  the 
fierce  excitement  of  political  conflict  he  once  or  twice  did 
what  could  not  be  defended,  these  were  but  spots  on  a 
character  otherwise  stainless.  Though  not  a  learned 
1804.  lawyer  he  was  a  great  constitutional  jurist.  He  died 
before  his  hour,  murdered  under  the  form  of  a  duel.  But 
it  is  not  likely  that  had  he  lived  longer  he  would  ever 


HI.  REPUBLIC.  135 

have  been  head  of  the  state.  Great  as  was  his  ascendancy 
over  the  men  of  his  own  party,  he  was  never  popular. 
His  memory  never  became  dear  to  the  multitude,  and  it 
was  left  to  his  own  family  at  a  late  day  to  erect  his  statue. 
Jefferson,  Washington's  Secretary  of  State,  was  and 
still  is  a  popular  idol.  This  man's  character  is  difficult  to 
treat.  There  is  something  enigmatic  about  his  portrait, 
which  combines  a  body  large  and  strong,  fitted  for  horse 
manship  and  athletic  exercise,  with  a  face  somewhat  fem 
inine  not  to  say  feline.  As  governor  of  Virginia  in  the 
war  he  had  shown  lack  of  nerve  if  not  of  courage.  Few 
will  maintain  that  he  was  in  an  eminent  degree  truthful, 
straightforward,  free  from  propensity  to  artifice  and  in 
trigue.  Few  will  contend  that  he  would  ever,  like  Hamil 
ton,  have  braved  unpopularity  in  defence  of  righteousness. 
His  own  Ana  remain  to  confute  any  admirer  who  claims 
for  him  freedom  from  malice  or  greatness  of  soul.  He 
had  unbounded  faith  in  the  people,  and  never  doubted  the 
success  of  the  great  American  experiment  in  democracy ; 
there  lay  his  strength.  The  social  current  of  the  age 
was  with  him ;  he  knew  it  and  steadfastly  guided  his 
course  on  the  assumption  that,  whatever  influences  might 
prevail  beneath  the  lingering  shadow  of  the  old  dis 
pensation,  democracy  would  in  the  end  prove  victorious, 
and  bear  its  votaries  on  to  success.  Intently  he  listened 
for  the  voice  of  the  popular  will,  and  surely  he  caught  its 
every  whisper.  His  political  philosophy  seems  to  have 
been  summed  up  in  the  belief  that  all  evils  having  been 
the  work  of  government,  the  less  of  government  there 
was  the  better.  This,  it  has  been  said,  stood  him  in  the 
place  of  religion.  Anarchy  itself  was,  or  he  could  fancy 
that  it  was,  preferable  to  strong  government.  Shays' 


136  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

rebellion  in  Massachusetts,  which  frightened  the  states 
into  union,  was  by  him  regarded  as  a  healthy  exercise  of 
freedom.  "  A  little  rebellion,"  he  said  on  that  occasion, 
"  is  a  good  thing  and  ought  not  to  be  too  much  discour 
aged."  It  was  a  medicine  necessary  for  the  health  of 
government.  "  God  forbid,"  he  cried,  u  that  we  should  be 
twenty  years  without  such  a  rebellion.  .  .  .  What  signi 
fied  a  few  lives  lost  in  a  century  or  two.  The  tree  of 
liberty  must  be  refreshed  from  time  to  time  with  the  blood 
of  patriots  and  tyrants :  it  was  its  natural  manure."  He 
affected  to  believe  that  the  Indians  who  had  no  govern 
ment  at  all  were  happier  than  the  people  who  lived  under 
the  European  governments ;  and  of  the  three  conditions, 
Indian  anarchy,  governments  wherein  every  one  had  a  just 
influence,  and  governments  of  force,  it  was  not  clear  in  his 
mind  that  the  first  condition  was  not  the  best.  He  did  not 
think  it  ridiculous  to  say  that  were  it  left  to  him  to  decide 
whether  they  should  have  a  government  without  news 
papers  or  newspapers  without  a  government  he  should  not 
hesitate  a  moment  to  prefer  the  latter.  He  embraced  and 
exhorted  a  disciple  to  propagate  a  theory  which  he  shrank 
from  propagating  himself,  that  no  generation  had  power 
to  bind  its  successors ;  and  that  as  nineteen  years  were  a 
generation,  national  repudiation  and  bankruptcy  would 
be  lawful  after  that  period.  These  were  his  transports, 
which  in  the  actual  field  of  politics  were  controlled  by 
his  good  sense.  Jefferson,  however,  was  not  one  of  the 
people,  but  a  being  of  a  higher  order  stooping  to  iden 
tify  himself  with  the  people  who,  as  they  were  not  yet 
conscious  of  their  power,  \vere  captivated  by  his  conde 
scension.  He  was  literary,  philosophic,  scientific.  His 
love  and  command  of  philosophic  abstractions  appears  in 


in.  REPUBLIC.  137 

the  most  momentous  and  famous  of  his  works,  the  Decla 
ration  of  Independence.  He  planned  the  University  of 
Virginia.  He  was  in  his  day  the  cynosure  of  classical 
taste,  and  the  father  of  that  domestic  architecture  which 
presented  the  front  of  a  Doric  temple  Avith  family  and 
culinary  developments  in  the  rear.  His  agriculture  was 
scientific  and  experimental.  In  religion  he  was  a  free 
thinker,  and  in  his  own  State  an  ardent  promoter  of  reli 
gious  liberty.  To  him  Anglican  establishment  in  Virginia 
owed  its  doom.  He  detested  the  clergy  and  by  the 
clergy  was  detested.  He  hated  England  with  intense  bit 
terness,  was  French  to  the  core,  and  went  all  lengths  in 
his  sympathy  with  the  French  revolution.  He  could 
palliate  the  September  massacre,  rejoice  that  his  friends  at 
home  were  taking  the  name  of  Jacobins,  and  say  that 
rather  than  the  revolution  should  have  failed  he  would 
have  seen  half  the  earth  devastated ;  that  were  there  but 
an  Adam  and  an  Eve  left  in  every  country  things  would 
be  better  than  they  were.  The  clergy,  when  he  taunted 
them  with  fanaticism,  might  have  retorted  that  fanaticism 
was  not  confined  to  religion.  Had  he  been  a  fellow  citi 
zen  of  Robespierre  he  would  have  been  in  some  danger 
with  his  enthusiasm,  his  sentimentalism,  and  his  acquies 
cence  in  philanthropic  blood-shed,  of  doing  as  Robespierre 
and  other  sentimental  philanthropists  did.  The  danger 
would  have  been  enhanced  by  his  extreme  suspiciousness ; 
for  he  lived  in  a  perpetual  tremor,  spying  "monocracy," 
the  political  demon  of  his  fancy,  not  only  in  Hamilton  and 
all  Hamilton's  associates,  but  in  Washington  himself,  at 
whom  he  glanced  in  his  political  correspondence,  though 
he  could  not  directly  assail  the  character  of  the  hero.  As 
to  England,  she  was  capable  in  his  imagination  of  bribing 


138  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

the  Algerines  to  prey  upon  American  commerce.  Another 
of  his  peculiarities  was  his  tendency,  derived  perhaps  from 
the  mixed  influences  of  a  planting  state,  Rome,  Sparta,  and 
Rousseau,  to  dislike  commerce  and  manufactures,  and  re 
gard  agriculture  as  the  foster-mother  of  political  and  social 
virtue.  Of  the  abolition  of  slavery  he  was  a  philosophic 
advocate,  but  never  emancipated  his  own  slaves.  As  a 
party  leader  he  was  a  perfect  artist  in  his  way.  But  his 
way  was  not  that  of  the  modern  politician,  whose  first 
requisite  he  lacked.  He  was  no  platform  orator ;  he  was 
no  orator  at  all.  He  seems  to  have  wanted  both  flow  of 
language  and  nerve.  He  did  not  even  enter  the  lists  as  a 
public  writer.  He  managed  his  party  through  its  leading 
men,  and  its  leading  men  by  personal  correspondence, 
which  he  carried  on  with  boundless  industry  and  consum 
mate  tact,  always  masking  his  restless  and  far-reaching  am 
bition  beneath  professions  of  devotion  to  private  happiness 
and  distaste  for  public  life.  He,  however,  used  the  press 
as  his  organ,  and  it  is  not  easy  to  extricate  him  from  the 
charge  of  having  countenanced  Freneau,  a  reptile  journal 
ist,  in  attacking  the  administration  of  which  he  was  a 
member.  His  principal  lieutenant  was  Madison,  a  man  of 
cultivated  mind,  a  political  philosopher,  one  of  the  writers 
of  "  The  Federalist,"  master  of  an  Addisonian  style,  free 
from  the  extravagances  of  his  leader  while  destitute  of  Jef 
ferson's  winning  enthusiasm  and  genius  for  party  manage 
ment,  well-meaning  and  incorruptible,  though,  as  he  was 
destined  to  show  on  a  fatal  occasion,  morally  weak.  Of  all 
American  statesmen,  hitherto,  Jefferson  has  left  the  deepest 
impression  on  the  character  of  his  people.  Their  political 
ideas  and  hopes,  their  notions  about  their  own  destiny  and 
the  part  which  they  are  to  play  in  the  drama  of  humanity 


in.  REPUBLIC.  139 

have  been  his.  That  Jefferson,  not  Hamilton,  rightly 
divined  the  tendency  of  society  and  the  secret  of  the 
future  is  so  far  the  verdict  of  events.  It  remains  to  be 
seen  whether  the  belief  in  individual  liberty,  self-reliance, 
and  self-help  which  formed  his  gospel  is  to  give  way  as  the 
creed  of  the  party  progress,  to  belief  in  socialistic  regula 
tion  and  the  paternal  action  of  the  state. 

All  that  the  patriotic  appeals  of  a  chief,  himself  serenely 
superior  to  personal  rivalries,  could  do  to  hold  these  two 
men  together  in  the  public  service  was  done  by  Washing 
ton,  but  in  vain.  After  explosions  and  explanations  in 
which  Jefferson  failed  to  produce  anything  except  vague 
suspicion  artfully  expressed  against  his  rival,  the  Secretary 
of  State  retired  from  office  to  Monticello,  his  hermitage,  as 
his  fancy  styles  it,  to  farm,  as  he  said  in  all  his  letters,  and 
at  the  same  time  to  spin  a  vast  web  of  party  connection  by 
a  correspondence  full  of  personal  and  political  allurement, 
while  he  listened  for  the  footfall  of  advancing  democracy 
whose  advent  was  to  be  the  signal  for  his  own  rise  to 
power. 

Under  Washington's  reign  and  through  Hamilton's 
measures  of  financial  and  administrative  reform,  the  Re 
public  became  responsible  and  respectable.  America 
entered  the  community  of  nations.  She  showed  it  by  bold 
dealing  with  the  corsairs  of  Algiers  to  whom  she  sent  men 
of  war  instead  of  tribute,  laying  thereby  the  foundation  of 
her  national  navy.  It  was  hard  to  expect  that  she  should 
be  treated  as  a  nation  before  she  had  become  one,  by  Eng 
land  or  any  other  power.  "  Our  country,"  wrote  John 
Adams,  "  is  grown,  or  at  least  has  been,  dishonest.  She 
has  broken  her  faith  with  the  nations  and  with  her  own 
citizens,  and  parties  are  all  about  for  continuing  this  dis- 


140  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

honourable  course.  She  must  become  strictly  honest  and 
punctual  before  all  the  world,  before  she  can  recover  the 
confidence  of  anybody  abroad."  The  distinguishing  quali 
ties  of  the  colonies  and  their  government  previously  to  the 
union  have  been  described  as  "  faction,  jealousy,  and  discord, 
infirmity  of  purpose,  feebleness  in  action,  unblushing  dis 
honesty  in  finance,  black  ingratitude  against  the  army, 
and  a  rapid  acquisition  of  an  ever-growing  contempt  on 
the  part  of  the  rest  of  mankind."  These  are  the  words  of 
a  recent  American  writer  of  mark.  The  conduct  of  the 
English  government  during  the  years  of  American  anarchy 
has  been  harshly  judged  even  by  English  writers.  In  the 
light  of  what  followed  it  is  seen  that  heartily  to  take  the 
initiative  in  the  restoration  of  amity  would  have  been 
England's  wisest  as  well  as  her  most  magnanimous  course. 
But  apart  from  the  soreness  of  defeat  upon  which  people 
who  are  themselves  at  all  sensitive  ought  not  to  be  severe, 
there  was  not  a  little  to  repel  amicable  advances.  The 
Americans  refused  to  pay  their  debts  to  their  English 
creditors ;  some  of  the  States  seemed  determined  to  repu 
diate.  The  treatment  of  the  loyalists,  which  disgusted 
Hamilton,  Greene,  and  Jay,  could  not  fail  to  disgust  still 
more  those  in  whose  cause  the  loyalists  suffered,  and  the 
complaints  of  a  number  of  these  men  who  had  migrated  to 
England  were  ringing  in  English  ears.  Till  the  American 
government  had  power  to  enforce  treaties,  negotiation  was 
bootless  and  the  interchange  of  ambassadors  would  have 
been  a  farce.  In  the  question  of  indemnity  to  loyalists 
the  confederacy  had  avowed  that  it  had  no  means  of  en 
forcing  the  concurrence  of  the  States.  The  north-western 
posts  were  held  by  England  practically  as  a  security  for  the 
payment  of  the  debts.  That  the  British  Government  or 


III. 


REPUBLIC.  141 


anybody  by  its  authority  was  intriguing  with  the  Indians 
against  the  Americans  is  an  assertion  of  which  there  ap 
pears  to  be  no  proof.  Simcoe,  the  Governor  of  Upper 
Canada,  having  fallen  under  suspicion,  though  an  excellent 
officer,  was  recalled.  Of  the  narrow  mind  of  George  III 
it  would  have  been  vain  to  expect  the  magnanimity  of 
greatness.  He  had  suffered  enough  to  be  regarded  with 
some  indulgence.  But  he  never  was  discourteous,  and  he 
made  a  manifest  effort  to  be  cordial.  When  John  Adams,  June, 
the  first  American  ambassador,  addressed  him,  the  King,  7  ' 
as  Adams  tells  us,  was  much  affected,  and  answered  with 
tremor.  "  Sir,"  he  said,  "  the  circumstances  of  this  audi 
ence  are  so  extraordinary,  the  language  you  have  now 
held  is  so  extremely  proper,  and  the  feelings  you  have  dis 
covered  so  justly  adapted  to  the  occasion,  that  I  must  say 
that  I  not  only  receive  with  pleasure  the  assurance  of  the 
friendly  dispositions  of  the  United  States,  but  that  I  am 
very  glad  the  choice  has  fallen  upon  you  to  be  their  min 
ister.  I  wish  you,  sir,  to  believe  and  that  it  may  be  under 
stood  in  America,  that  I  have  done  nothing  in  the  late 
contest  but  what  I  thought  myself  indispensably  bound  to 
do  by  the  duty  which  I  owe  to  my  people.  I  will  be  very 
frank  with  you.  I  was  the  last  to  consent  to  the  separa 
tion;  but  the  separation  having  been  made,  and  having 
become  inevitable,  I  have  always  said,  as  I  say  now,  that  I 
would  be  the  first  to  meet  the  friendship  of  the  United 
States  as  an  independent  power.  The  moment  I  see  such 
sentiments  and  language  as  yours  prevail,  and  a  disposition 
to  give  to  this  country  the  preference,  that  moment  I  shall 
say,  let  the  circumstances  of  language,  religion,  and  blood 
have  their  natural  and  full  effect."  The  last  sentence  is  not 
so  good  as  the  rest,  but  the  King's  emotion  and  his  habitual 
want  of  command  of  language  disarm  strict  criticism. 


142  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

We  can  hardly  doubt  that  Pitt  shared  the  desire  of  Shel- 
burne  to  restore  family  relations.  On  the  other  hand  it 
seems  not  unlikely  that  Americans  at  the  Court  of  St. 
James's  sometimes  put  on  a  republican  air.  A  rebuff  ad 
ministered  by  them  to  aristocracy  and  monarchy  is  re 
counted  by  the  biographer  with  a  smile.  There  were  even 
causes  for  mistrust.  Gouverneur  Morris  takes  offence  at 
the  coldness  with  which  he  is  received  by  a  British  minister. 

1790.  By  his  own  avowal  he  had  just  been  instigating  the  French 
government  to  form  a  hostile  confederacy  against  Great 
Britain  and  make  a  war  on  her  which  she  had  done  nothing 
to  provoke.     It  is  not  unlikely  that  the  British  minister 
had  an  inkling  of  this ;  if  he  had  his  coldness  was  excusa 
ble.     The  British  statesmen  of  that  day,  when  we  repine 
at  what  we  think  their  folly  in  failing  to  clap  their  padlock 
on  the  American  heart,  are  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  later 
experience.     It  seems  that  no  harmony  is  so  difficult  to 
restore  as  that  between  two  kindred  nations  which  have 
once  broken  the  tie. 

Government  showed  its  new  force  in  grappling  with  a 
foe  nearer  home.  In  the  procession  at  Philadelphia  on  the 
ratification  of  the  constitution  were  seen  a  citizen  and  an 
Indian  chief  seated  together  in  an  open  carriage  and  smok 
ing  the  calumet  to  personify  peace  on  the  frontiers.  It  was 
easier  to  personify  peace  than  to  install  it.  Washington 
had  to  deal  with  a  formidable  Indian  war  in  the  northwest. 

1791.  One  of  his  generals,  St.  Clair,  met  with  a  defeat  not  less 
disastrous  than  that  of  Braddock,  the  disgrace  of  which  is 
cast  wholly  on  British  officers  and  troops.     But  General 
Wayne  restored  the  day,  and  by  a  great  victory  over  the 
Indians  practically  closed  the  struggle  with  the  tribes  as  a 
power,  and  the  influence  of  that  struggle  on  American  his- 


in.  REPUBLIC.  143 

tory.  Assimilation,  however,  never  took  place.  The  dis 
placement  of  Indian  tribes  by  advancing  civilization  con 
tinued,  though  mitigated  by  a  system  of  reservations.  The 
desultory  conflict  between  the  Indian  and  the  frontiersman, 
with  its  savage  features,  steeping  the  frontier  character  in 
ferocity,  continued  in  the  far  west,  and  is  not  extinct  even 
at  this  day. 

Washington  had  also  to  deal  with  the  local  renewal  of 
the  anarchy  created  by  the  civil  war  and  by  the  absence  of 
a  national  government  in  the  interval  between  the  war  and 
the  union.  A  part  of  Hamilton's  financial  policy  was  an 
excise.  Against  this  an  insurrection  broke  out  among  the  1792. 
restive  population  of  Western  Pennsylvania.  By  Wash 
ington's  firmness  and  wisdom  the  revolt  was  put  down 
and  law  was  enforced  without  bloodshed. 

Washington's  re-election,  like  his  election,  was  unani-  1792. 
mous.  He  might  have  wavered  more  between  the  call  of 
public  duty  and  his  yearning  for  private  happiness  had  he 
foreseen  the  storm  that  was  to  rage  during  his  second  term. 
The  mine  in  France  to  which  American  revolt  had  set  the 
match  had  now  exploded  and  the  French  revolution  had 
been  launched  on  its  mad  career.  At  first  all  Americans 
hailed  the  dawn  of  French  liberty.  But  when  to  the  dawn 
of  liberty  a  day  of  confusion,  massacre,  blasphemy,  anar 
chy,  and  public  lunacy  succeeded,  the  educated,  wealthy, 
and  religious  classes  for  the  most  part  recoiled.  The  law- 
loving  Englishman  awoke  in  them  and  they  began  to 
sympathize  with  England  as  the  power  of  ordered  liberty 
against  the  frenzy  of  the  Jacobins.  Yet  the  sympathy  of 
the  masses  remained  with  France  and  seemed  to  be  intensi 
fied,  instead  of  being  diminished,  by  her  extravagances  and 
crimes.  It  rose  to  the  pitch  of  delirium  when  France 


144  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

1793.  declared  war  against  England.  A  French  envoy,  Genet, 
was  welcomed  with  transports  of  popular  enthusiasm.  He 
was  young,  ardent,  imbued  with  a  piratical  diplomacy  of 
the  philanthropic  Republic.  He  proceeded  with  Jacobin 
energy  to  treat  the  United  States  as  a  satrapy  of  revolu 
tionary  France,  to  use  its  territory  as  the  base  of  a  maritime 
war  against  England,  to  fit  out  in  its  ports  privateers  which, 
manned  with  American  seamen,  preyed  upon  British  com 
merce,  and  even  to  set  up  courts  of  admiralty  for  the  con 
demnation  of  his  prizes.  By  the  privateers  in  conjunction 
with  two  French  frigates  fifty  British  vessels  were  captured, 
some  of  them  in  American  waters.  He  appealed  to  privi 
leges  which  the  United  States  had  by  treaty  accorded  to 
France,  but  which,  even  assuming  that  the  regicide  Republic 
was  the  heir  of  the  monarchy,  could  not,  any  more  than 
treaty  arrangements  of  the  ordinary  kind,  override  inter 
national  obligations.  In  all  his  outrages,  Genet  was  wildly 
applauded  by  the  Republican  masses.  When  his  piratical 

1793.  frigate  sailed  into  Philadelphia  flaunting  the  English 
colours  reversed  with  the  French  flag  over  them,  the  whole 
population  of  what  was  then  the  political  capital  of  the 
Republic  turned  out  to  display  its  sympathy.  The  4th  of 
July,  we  are  told,  seemed  more  like  a  French  than  an 
American  demonstration.  Could  Louis  XVI  have  looked 
down  in  spirit  upon  the  scene,  he,  who  had  saved  the 
Americans  from  sure  disaster,  might  have  beheld  a  civic 
banquet  given  in  honour  of  the  regicide  emissary  and 
graced  by  the  presence  of  the  governor  of  an  American 
State  at  which  after  singing  "  The  Marseillaise  "  the  head 
of  a  pig  was  handed  round  and  stabbed  by  the  knife  of 
each  of  the  guests  in  turn  with  appropriate  maledictions. 
Those  who  blame  the  British  statesmen  of  that  day  for 


in.  REPUBLIC.  145 

showing  coldness  towards  the  American  Republic  are  bound 
to  remember  that  England  received  from  an  American 
party,  not  on  account  of  her  misdeeds  but  on  account  of 
her  monarchical  character,  demonstrations  not  of  coldness, 
but  of  frenzied  hatred.  Washington,  faithful  to  interna 
tional  duty,  issued  a  proclamation  of  neutrality  and  enforced  1793 
it  with  vigour,  as  he  alone  could  have  done.  Jefferson, 
thoroughly  sharing  the  popular  feeling,  no  doubt  winced 
under  the  necessity  of  doing  his  duty  as  Secretary  of  State; 
yet  he  did  it.  His  sagacity  taught  him  that  Genet's 
extravagance  would  be  ruinous  to  his  cause  in  the  end.  So 
it  proved,  when  Genet,  utterly  losing  his  head,  appealed 
from  Washington's  government  to  the  people.  His  recall 
was  then  demanded  and  was  granted  the  more  readily  as 
in  the  swift  phantasmagoria  of  the  revolution  the  ascen 
dancy  of  his  faction  had  passed  away.  Washington  had 
also  tp  restrain  the  sympathies  of  his  own  envoy  at  Paris, 
Monroe,  who,  losing  the  ambassador  in  the  enthusiast, 
allowed  himself  to  be  publicly  welcomed  by  the  convention 
as  the  representative  of  a  revolutionary  republic  having  a 
common  cause  with  Jacobin  France,  and  to  receive  from 
the  President  that  hug  of  fraternity  in  which  confiding 
nations  died.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  crimes  and 
orgies  of  the  revolution  were  hateful  to  Washington,  who 
was  not  only  a  political  conservative,  but  believed,  and  in 
his  farewell  address  declared,  that  religion  was  the  indis 
pensable  basis  of  public  morality.  But  he  restrained  his 
feelings  and  amidst  the  storm  of  party  passion  raging 
around  him  kept  morally  as  well  as  legally  the  path  of 
strict  neutrality.  The  Jacobin  press  of  America,  including 
the  reputed  organ  of  his  own  Secretary  of  State,  assailed 
him,  especially  when  he  had  denounced  the  Jacobin  clubs 


146  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

which  had  been  founded  in  the  United  States  on  the  French 
model.  He  was  stung  sometimes  to  the  heart,  but  his 
resolution  was  not  moved. 

Washington's  authority  was  put  to  the  severest  test  by 
his  treaty  with  Great  Britain.  Relations  with  that  powei 
were  extremely  strained.  On  both  sides  some  of  the 
articles  of  the  treaty  made  at  the  close  of  the  American 
revolution  remained  unfulfilled,  and  in  addition  there  were 
questions  touching  liberty  of  commerce,  the  exercise  o;r 
belligerent  rights  by  Great  Britain  against  the  traders 
of  America  as  a  neutral  power,  and  the  impressment  o: 

1794.  British  seamen  found  in  American  vessels.  To  effect  a 
settlement  and  avertwar  Washington  determined  to  send 
an  envoy  to  England  and  his  choice  fell  upon  the  Chief 
Justice,  John  Jay,  of  whom  Webster  said,  that  the  ermino 
—  the  English  emblem  still  clinging  to  American  imagina 
tion —  touched  nothing  less  pure  than  itself  when  it  fell 
upon  Jay.  The  envoy  was  no  doubt  English  in  mental 
frame  and  political  sentiment,  but  there  is  not  the  slightest 
reason  for  believing  that  he  failed  in  his  mission  to  do  his 
best  for  his  country.  His  treaty,  as  it  restored  amity  with 
England,  was  sure  to  displease  the  French  party.  Wash- 

1796.  ington  kept  it  secret  for  some  time.  When  it  was  dis 
closed  a  furious  storm  arose ;  Jay  was  accused  of  having 
sold  his  country.  It  was  doubtful  whether  the  treaty 
wculd  pass  the  Senate.  The  scale  was  turned  in  its  favour 
by  a  speech  which  ranks  among  the  masterpieces  of  Ameri 
can  oratory  from  Fisher  Ames,  who,  supposing  himself  to 
be  in  the  last  stage  of  disease,  addressed  the  assembly  with 
the  pathetic  force  of  a  dying  man.  Ames  said  that  there 
was  little  use  in  combating  the  particular  objections  to 
the  treaty;  that  whatever  the  terms  might  be  no  agree- 


in.  REPUBLIC.  147 

ment  with  Great  Britain  would  satisfy  those  who  urged 
against  the  ambassador  that  he  was  not  ardent  enough 
in  his  hatred  of  her,  who  declared  that  no  treaty  ought 
to  be  made  with  an  enemy  of  France,  that  England  was  a 
den  of  sea-robbers,  that  her  people  deserved  to  be  extir 
pated,  and  that  it  would  be  well  for  mankind  if  she  were 
sunk  in  the  sea.  He  no  doubt  represented  truly  enough 
the  feelings  and  language  of  the  French  party.  The  in 
fluence  of  the  father  of  his  country  was  tried  to  the  utmost 
in  the  ratification  of  Jay's  treaty,  but  it  prevailed,  and 
peace,  if  not  friendship,  was  for  the  time  secured. 

Nothing  would  induce  Washington  to  accept  a  third 
term.  He  was  growing  old  and  deaf.  He  longed  for 
peace  and  his  farm.  The  attacks  of  the  Aurora,  the 
fiercely  democratic  and  anti-British  journal  of  Duane,  an 
Irish  refugee,  and  other  organs  of  the  republican  press, 
despicable  as  they  were  in  themselves,  being  taken  as  the 
utterances  of  a  large  party  sometimes  drew  from  him 
passionate  outbursts  of  grief,  especially  when  the  purity  of 
his  motives  was  impugned,  and  he,  the  most  disinterested 
of  men,  was  charged  with  designs  against  the  liberty  of  his 
country.  He  retired,  a  genuine  Cincinnatus,  to  Mount 
Vernon.  At  his  departure  he  issued  a  farewell  address,  1796. 
which  ranks  amongst  the  sacred  documents  of  American 
history.  In  this  he  solemnly  exhorted  his  fellow  citizens 
to  unity  and  love  of  their  country,  warning  them  against 
geographical  divisions,  against  the  excesses  of  party,  and, 
most  emphatically,  against  entanglements  with  European 
politics,  and  the  indulgence  of  inveterate  antipathies  to 
particular  nations  and  passionate  attachments  to  others, 
which,  as  he  said,  made  a  nation  a  slave  to  its  antipathies 
and  attachments,  and  in  both  cases  equally  led  it  astray 


148  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

from  the  path  of  its  duties  and  its  interests.  Excellent 
advice,  loudly  applauded  and  little  observed !  The  para 
graph  dwelling  on  the  value  of  religion  as  one  of  the 
pillars  of  national  prosperity  and  cautioning  against  the 
supposition  that  without  it  morality  could  be  maintained, 
can  hardly  have  failed  to  be  construed  as  a  thrust  at  the 
Jacobins  and  at  the  free-thinking  Jefferson.  Addresses  of 
profuse  gratitude  and  veneration  were  voted  by  Congress. 
A  few  murmurs  of  dissent  were  heard.  One  notably  from 
Andrew  Jackson,  the  Congressman  from  Tennessee,  of 
gaunt  frame  and  grim  aspect,  with  elf  locks  hanging  over 
his  face  and  his  hair  tied  behind  in  an  eel  skin,  and  so 
hot  in  temper  that  when  he  tried  to  speak  his  utterance 
was  choked  by  passion.  Nor  could  the  Aurora  and  its 
republican  consorts  in  the  press  be  silent.  In  the  Aurora 
appeared  an  article  ascribed  to  a  young  pupil  and  favour 
ite  of  Jefferson,  who  hailed  the  day  of  Washington's  de 
parture  as  the  day  of  salvation,  rejoiced  that  he  who  had 
been  the  source  of  all  the  misfortunes  of  the  country 
was  at  length  brought  down  to  the  level  of  his  fellow 
citizens,  that  he  could  no  longer  by  his  name  give  cur 
rency  to  political  iniquity  or  afford  support  to  suspicious 
projects,  and  that  the  designs  which  he  had  formed 
against  the  very  existence  of  public  liberty  were  now  at 
an  end.  "  If  ever  a  nation,"  said  the  Aurora  editorially, 
"  was  debauched  by  a  man,  the  American  nation  has  been 
deceived  by  Washington.  Let  his  conduct  then  be  an 
example  to  future  ages.  Let  it  serve  to  be  a  warning 
that  no  man  may  be  an  idol.  Let  the  history  of  the 
federal  government  instruct  mankind  that  the  mask  of 
patriotism  may  be  worn  to  conceal  the  foulest  designs 
against  the  liberty  of  the  people."  Rather  let  these  words 


in.  REPUBLIC.  149 

serve  as  a  warning  against  the  blind  frenzy  of  parti 
sanship  and  the  inherent  evils  of  party  government. 
Upon  Washington's  name  were  also  poured  the  vials 
of  hatred  by  Thomas  Paine,  on  whose  behalf,  when  he 
had  become  a  French  citizen,  sat  in  the  Convention,  and 
fallen  into  the  fangs  of  the  terrorists,  Washington  de 
clined  to  interpose.  In  truth  Washington  did  belong  in 
political  and  social  sentiment  to  a  departing  age  and  to 
a  different  sphere.  His  spirit,  as  well  as  the  man  himself, 
was  passing  off  the  scene.  What  would  be  his  feelings  if 
he  could  now  see  a  presidential  election  ? 

Washington's  renown  is  always  present  in  the  name  of 
the  national  capital,  the  site  of  which  after  its  temporary 
sojourn  at  Philadelphia  was,  in  accordance  with  his  wish, 
finally  fixed  on  the  Potomac,  where  it  might  seem  to  link 
the  North  and  South  together.  Hamilton  had  induced 
Jefferson  to  consent  to  the  assumption  of  the  State  debts 
by  the  Union  on  condition  that  the  national  capital  should 
be  placed  on  the  Potomac.  This  is  the  first  case  of  log 
rolling  in  the  history  of  Congress.  It  seems  to  have  been 
a  complex  case,  the  South  consenting  against  its  financial 
interest  to  the  assumption  of  the  State  debts  on  the  tacit 
understanding  that  Congress  should  turn  a  deaf  ear  to 
petitions  against  slavery.  Washington  thought  that  the 
city  on  the  Potomac  would  become  an  important  mart. 
It  never  did ;  nor  did  it,  till  very  recent  times,  become 
anything  but  a  political  and  administrative  capital  in  the 
wilderness,  with  but  little  of  general  society  to  temper  the 
roughness  of  the  legislators  and  mitigate  the  violence  of 
party  conflict.  The  presence  of  slavery  was  not  conducive 
either  to  good  manners  or  to  virtue.  No  wonder  if  politics 
at  Washington  were  somewhat  rude,  if  affrays  and  duels 


150  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

were  not  uncommon,  if  the  dullness  of  senatorial  boarding 
houses  was  too  often  relieved  by  drinking  or  gambling, 
and  their  lack  of  domestic  happiness  by  connections  to 
which  slavery  everywhere  opens  the  door.  The  error  of 
placing  the  seat  of  the  legislature  away  from  the  social 
centres  has  been  repeated  by  almost  all  the  States  and  by 
the  Canadian  confederation. 

Parties  were  by  this  time  distinctly  formed.  Their  ma 
chinery  had  been  set  on  foot  though  not  brought  to  modern 
perfection.  The  weakness  of  the  elective  system,  the  in 
ability  of  electors  unknown  to  each  other  to  concur  in  a 
choice,  had  been  revealed,  and  the  party  ticket  had  taken 
the  place  of  a  really  popular  election.  Federal  parties  ex 
tended,  as  they  ever  have,  to  State  politics,  the  party  in 
each  State  being  a  sort  of  donkey-engine  to  the  great 
federal  machine.  By  Washington's  retirement  the  con 
trolling  hand  which  suspended  their  conflict  had  been  with 
drawn.  Of  the  Federalist  party  Hamilton  was  the  soul 
but  not  the  head,  its  Achilles  but  not  its  Agamemnon. 
Between  John  Adams,  who  had  been  Vice-President  under 
Washington,  as  the  Federalist,  and  Jefferson,  as  the  Re 
publican  candidate,  the  election  for  the  Presidency  lay. 
1797.  John  Adams  was  elected.  The  voting  betrayed  the  politi 
cal  division  between  North  and  South  which  Washington 
might  deplore  but  could  not  blot  out,  since  its  line  was 
traced  by  the  hand  of  nature.  There  is  nothing  in  a  rational 
republic  to  forbid  the  existence  of  great  political  houses, 
and  the  family  of  Adams  is  the  nearest  approach  to  such  a 
house  which  the  American  republic  has  seen.  John  Adams 
was  a  high  Federalist  and  an  admirer  of  the  British  con 
stitution,  on  the  purified  principles  of  which  he  desired 
that  American  institutions  should  repose.  But  he  was 


III. 


REPUBLIC.  151 


one  of  the  sires  of  the  revolution  and,  as  an  American, 
thoroughly  loyal  to  the  republic.  Moreover,  as  envoy  to 
St.  James's  he  had  come  in  contact  with  British  society  in 
an  unpropitious  hour,  and  being  personally  sensitive  was 
far  from  friendly  to  Great  Britain.  By  a  recent  American 
historian  he  is  described  in  familiar  language  as  "  a  burly, 
round-faced,  bald-headed,  irascible  man  with  a  tough  fibre, 
who  was  little  understood  by  the  people  and  to  whom  Con 
gressional  debates  had  been  a  sealed  book."  In  integrity 
he  was  an  ancient  Roman.  He  had  more  force  than  play 
of  character,  and  though  his  experience  was  wide,  for  he 
had  been  ambassador  as  well  as  statesman,  more  knowledge 
of  books  than  of  men.  He  was  somewhat  dogmatic,  some 
what  pedantic,  and  from  his  childhood  too  self-conscious 
and  too  laboriously  self-trained,  as  his  methodical  diary 
shows.  He  had  soon  to  deal,  like  his  predecessor,  with  the 
overbearing  violence  of  revolutionary  France,  now  flushed 
with  victory,  governed  by  a  Directory  composed  of  the 
unscrupulous  and  rapacious  men  who  are  thrown  to  the 
top  by  revolution,  and  having  for  its  foreign  minister 
Talleyrand,  imbued,  after  a  brief  sojourn  in  the  United 
States,  with  a  low  notion  of  American  power.  Under 
colour  of  belligerent  rights  the  French  preyed  on  Ameri 
can  commerce  in  both  hemispheres,  two  of  their  cruisers 
being  commanded  by  Barney,  an  American,  while  as  the 
price  of  forbearance  and  an  amicable  treaty  they  insisted 
in  effect  that  the  United  States  should  take  part  with 
them  as  a  vassal  ally  against  Great  Britain  in  the  war. 
Adams  sent  three  envoys  to  Paris.  Talleyrand,  through  Oct. 
his  reptile  agents,  gave  them  to  understand  that  the 
American  Republic,  if  it  would  escape  the  displeasure  of 
the  Directory  and  obtain  a  treaty,  must,  like  other  com- 


152  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

monwealths  which  France  had  taken  to  her  bosom,  pay 
her  tribute  and,  in  addition,  a  large  sum  as  a  bribe  to  the 
Apr.  Directors  and  himself.  His  sagacity  for  once  had  failed 
179L  him.  The  publication  of  the  papers  called  the  "X.  Y.  Z. 
Correspondence"  because  Talleyrand's  agents  were  denoted 
by  those  ciphers,  kindled  in  America  a  fierce  flame  .of  re 
sentment,  and  for  a  moment  hatred  of  England  was  lost  in 
indignation  at  the  insolent  tyranny  of  France.  Federalists 
were  exultant,  Republicans  were  downcast.  Jefferson 
quaked  and  watched  the  storm  with  close-reefed  sails. 
Popular  feeling  swelled  high.  French  emblems  disap 
peared.  The  black  cockade  of  the  American  revolution 
replaced  the  tri-colour.  "  Hail  Columbia  "  was  composed 
to  oust  the  "  Marseillaise."  "  Millions  for  defence,  but  not 
a  cent  for  tribute,"  was  the  cry.  Talleyrand  was  burnt  in 
effigy,  and  President  Adams  found  himself  the  object  of 
an  enthusiasm  which  personally  he  could  never  have 
excited.  Preparations  for  war  were  made  by  land  and 
1798.  sea.  Washington  was  called  upon  to  take  once  more  the 
command  of  the  army  and  consented  in  words  which 
showed  his  deep  sense  of  French  outrage.  War  had  in 
fact  commenced  by  sea,  and  a  French  frigate  had  been 
captured  by  an  American,  when  the  President,  who  had 
taken  the  strongest  ground  of  national  dignity,  to  the  sur 
prise  and  dismay  of  his  party,  appointed  a  minister  pleni 
potentiary  to  France.  By  this  time  the  battle  of  the  Nile 
and  the  turn  of  fortune  in  Italy  had  tempered  the  pride  of 
the  Directory  and  a  treaty  was  made.  It  cost  Adams  the 
attachment  of  the  more  vehement  members  of  his  party, 
but  whether  he  was  perfectly  right  or  not  in  his  treatment 
of  his  political  friends,  it  cannot  be  doubted  that  he  was 
right  in  avoiding  war. 


in.  REPUBLIC.  153 

On  this  occasion  Adams  did  not  consult  his  cabinet,  a 
name  given  to  the  great  heads  of  departments,  the  Secre 
tary  of  State,  or  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs,  the  Secreta 
ries  of  the  Treasury,  War,  the  Navy,  and  the  Interior, 
the  Post  Master  General,  and  the  Attorney  General,  whom 
the  President  usually  takes  into  his  counsel,  though  their 
offices  strictly  speaking  are  merely  departmental  and  they 
exercise  no  collective  function,  like  that  exercised  by  the 
British  Cabinet,  of  initiating  and  controlling  legislation. 

The  Federalists  still  had  the  upper  hand,  but  they  threw 
away  their  advantage  by  using  it  to  excess.  They  passed 
two  acts  called  the  Alien  and  Sedition  Acts,  menacing  1798. 
to  liberty.  The  United  States  were  full  of  political 
refugees  from  Europe,  most  of  them  revolutionists,  some 
of  them  agitators  by  profession,  who  had  got  the  political 
press  largely  into  their  hands.  Against  these  was  pointed 
the  Alien  Act  giving  the  government  power  of  expulsion. 
The  Sedition  Act,  even  in  the  form  in  which  it  passed  and 
which  was  milder  than  the  original  Bill,  did  not  well 
observe  the  line  between  lawful  criticism  or  constitutional 
resistance  and  sedition.  A  violent  revulsion  of  public 
feeling  ensued.  Jefferson  welcomed  the  rising  gale.  He 
was  indeed  carried  out  of  his  usual  prudence  and  reserve. 
He  drew  up  a  manifesto  for  the  use  of  his  party  in  Ken 
tucky  designating  the  Union  as  a  compact  among  States, 
claiming  for  the  States  severally  the  right  of  resisting  any 
breach  of  the  compact,  and  pronouncing  that  for  a  legis 
lative  encroachment  on  the  part  of  the  federal  government 
the  remedy  of  a  State  was  nullification.  This  doctrine 
took  no  effect  at  the  time,  but  it  did  not  die.  With  the 
Alien  and  Sedition  Acts  was  passed  a  Naturalization  Act,  1798. 
increasing  the  term  of  necessary  residence  from  five  to 


154  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

fourteen  years.  This  measure  betrayed  the  alarm  of 
native  Americans  caused  by  the  influx  of  a  motley  tide 
of  immigrants,  including  a  number  of  Irishmen,  most  of 
whom  were  exiles  through  discontent  and  infected  with 
revolutionary  fever.  The  Act  was  repealed  a  few  years 
afterwards  and  the  old  term  of  five  years  was  restored  in 
1802.  In  those  days  anything  like  a  closing  of  the  door  of 
the  universal  asylum  seemed  impolitic  as  well  as  inhospi 
table,  whatever  national  interest  may  prescribe  now. 

These  political  struggles,  over  which  no  baton  of  impar 
tial  command  was  waved  any  more,  enhanced  the  intensity 
and  bitterness  of  party.  Right-minded  men  deplored  the 
effect  on  social  relations.  The  party  press  grew  in  volume, 
the  number  of  political  journals  mounting  from  forty  to  a 
hundred,  in  power  since  each  party  journal  had  the  minds 
of  its  readers  to  itself,  and  at  the  same  time  in  slanderous 
virulence.  Callender,  a  vagabond  whose  pen  Jefferson 
had  stooped  to  employ,  and  who  afterwards  turned  against 
him  and  libelled  him,  was  a  type  of  the  class.  Attacks 
were  made  on  the  personal  characters  of  statesmen,  and 
Hamilton,  assailed  with  a  baseless  charge  of  corruption, 
was  compelled  in  his  defence  to  confess  that  he  had  been 
guilty  of  an  adulterous  amour.  Congress  saw  its  halls 
profaned  by  a  brutal  affray  between  two  of  its  members. 
The  State  politics  of  New  York  and  in  a  less  degree  those 
of  Pennsylvania,  full  of  cabal  and  corruption  from  the 
beginning,  mingled  with  the  current  of  federal  politics 
and  deepened  the  darkness  of  its  tide. 

In  the  choice  of  candidates  at  the  next  Presidential 
election  there  was  on  the  side  of  the  Federalists  a  good 
deal  of  intrigue,  scope  for  which  at  that  time  was  given 
by  the  mode  of  election,  each  elector  voting  for  two  men 


in.  REPUBLIC.  155 

as  President  or  Vice-President,  without  saying  which  of 
the  two  he  preferred  for  the  Presidency,  so  that  the  ulti 
mate  choice  was  left  to  the  House  of  Representatives. 
John  Adams,  the  natural  candidate  of  the  Federalists, 
received  an  ugly  thrust  from  Hamilton,  whom  he  had 
incensed  by  his  conduct  in  the  affair  with  France. 
Hamilton  himself  soon  after  fell  in  a  quarrel  arising  out  July 
of  New  York  politics  by  the  pistol  of  Aaron  Burr,  a  local  1 
Catiline  whose  unscrupulous  ambition  he  had  crossed, 
falling  a  victim  to  a  false  code  of  honour  which  survived 
when  other  relics  of  feudalism  had  passed  away.  His 
work,  or  as  much  of  it  as  was  practicable,  was  done.  To 
keep  the  Republic  out  of  the  hands  of  the  democracy  and 
in  the  hands  of  the  chosen  few  was  impossible,  but  Hamil 
ton  had  succeeded  in  making  it  national,  and  in  giving  it 
a  strong  central  government.  In  this  his  policy  received 
the  powerful  and  timely  aid  of  Marshall,  the  great  Chief 
Justice  of  the  United  States,  who  by  a  series  of  judgments 
on  constitutional  questions  upheld  and  enlarged  the  power 
of  the  federal  government.  The  clause  of  the  constitution 
authorizing  Congress  to  make  all  laws  which  should  be 
necessary  and  proper  for  carrying  into  execution  its 
enumerated  powers  afforded  scope  for  a  liberal  interpre 
tation  of  which  the  Chief  Justice  took  full  advantage. 
His  decision  in  favour  of  the  creation  of  a  federal  bank 
was  a  notable  instance.  It  is  allowed  that  he  might  with 
equal  reason  have  decided  the  other  way. 

The  result  was  that  the  seed  which  Jefferson  had  for 
years  been  assiduously  sowing  bore  its  fruit.     He  became  1801. 
President  and  with  power  to  give  his  policy  full  effect.     In 
him  the  Republican  party  completely  triumphed,  while  the 
Federalist  party  sank  to  rise  again  no  more  in  that  form  or 


156  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

under  that  name.  Adams,  stung  to  the  heart  by  the  elec 
tion  of  Jefferson,  refused  to  witness  the  hateful  spectacle 
of  his  successor's  inauguration.  He  spent  his  last  hours  in 
filling  up  vacancies  to  place  patronage  out  of  Jefferson's 
reach ;  then  he  departed,  the  old  order  in  his  person  giving 
place  with  a  frown  and  a  shudder  to  the  new.  Adams 
did  not  hate  monarchy,  he  thought  that  for  England  it 
was  good.  In  the  eyes  of  Jefferson  monarchy  was  the 
incarnate  spirit  of  evil  and  to  rid  mankind  of  it  by 
example  was  the  mission  of  the  American  Republic. 

Every  vestige  of  the  half  monarchical  state  which 
Washington  had  retained  was  now  banished  from  the 
President's  mansion  and  life.  No  more  coaches-and-six, 
no  more  court  dress,  no  more  leve'es.  Although  Jefferson 
did  not,  as  legend  says,  ride  to  his  inauguration  and  tie 
his  horse  to  the  fence,  he  was  inaugurated  with  as  little 
ceremony  as  possible.  He  received  an  ambassador  in 
slippers  down  at  the  heel,  and  in  the  arrangement  of  his 
dinner  parties  was  so  defiant  of  the  rules  of  etiquette  as  to 
breed  trouble  in  the  diplomatic  circle.  Yet  with  all  his 
outward  simplicity  the  Virginian  magnate  and  man  of 
letters,  though  he  might  be  a  Republican,  could  not  in 
himself  be  a  true  embodiment  of  democracy.  He  was  the 
friend  of  the  people,  but  not  one  of  them.  From  him  to 
the  rough  warrior  of  Tennessee,  the  hard-cider  drinking 
pioneer  of  Ohio,  and  the  rail-splitter  of  Illinois,  there  was 
still  a  long  road  to  be  travelled.  Nor  had  Jefferson  any 
thing  in  common  with  Jacobins  who  guillotined  Lavoisier 
saying  that  the  Republic  had  no  need  of  chemists ;  for 
among  the  cherished  objects  of  his  government  was  the 
encouragement  of  science. 

The  desired  day  had  come  when  the  philosopher  was  to 


in.  REPUBLIC.  157 

govern.  The  words  of  the  address  which  Jefferson,  unlike 
the  demagogic  sons  of  thunder  in  the  present  day,  read  in 
a  very  low  voice,  are  the  expression  by  its  great  master  and 
archetype  of  the  republican  idea  which  has  hitherto  reigned 
supreme  in  the  mind  of  the  American  people.  These  words 
are  monumental,  "  Equal  and  exact  justice  to  all  men,  of 
whatever  state  or  persuasion,  religious  or  political ;  peace, 
commerce,  and  honest  friendship  with  all  nations,  entangling 
alliances  with  none ;  the  support  of  the  State  governments 
in  all  their  rights,  as  the  most  competent  administrations 
for  our  domestic  concerns  and  the  surest  bulwarks  against 
anti-republican  tendencies,  the  preservation  of  the  general 
government  in  its  whole  constitutional  vigour,  as  the 
sheet-anchor  of  our  peace  at  home  and  safety  abroad ;  a 
jealous  care  of  the  right  of  election  by  the  People ;  a 
mild  and  safe  correction  of  abuses  which  are  lopped  by  the 
sword  of  revolution  where  peaceable  remedies  are  unpro 
vided  ;  absolute  acquiescence  in  the  decisions  of  the 
majority,  the  vital  principle  of  republics,  from  which 
there  is  no  appeal  but  to  force,  the  vital  principle  and 
immediate  parent  of  despotism  ;  a  well-disciplined  militia, 
our  best  reliance  in  peace  and  for  the  first  movements 
in  war,  till  regulars  may  relieve  them ;  the  supremacy  of 
the  civil  over  the  military  authority;  economy  in  the 
public  expense,  that  labour  may  be  lightly  burdened ;  the 
honest  payment  of  our  debts,  and  sacred  preservation  of 
the  public  faith ;  encouragement  of  agriculture,  and  of 
commerce  as  its  handmaid,  the  diffusion  of  information, 
and  arraignment  of  all  abuses  at  the  bar  of  public  reason ; 
freedom  of  religion,  freedom  of  the  press,  and  freedom  of 
person  under  the  protection  of  the  habeas  corpus,  and  trial 
by  jurors  impartially  selected  ;  —  these  principles  form  the 


158  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

bright  constellation  which  has  gone  before  us  and  guided 
our  steps  through  an  age  of  revolution  and  reformation." 

Jefferson's  wand  was  the  pen.  Yet  he  is  strangely  apt 
to  fall  into  mixed  metaphors  and  even  into  platitudes.  This 
address  has  not  escaped  criticism.  A  constellation  goes 
before  the  people  and  guides  their  steps.  In  the  sequel 
the  constellation  becomes  a  creed,  a  text,  a  touchstone,  and 
should  the  people  wander  from  the  "  touchstone,"  they 
are  conjured  to  "  retrace  their  steps  and  regain  the  road." 
In  the  genius  of  a  man  who  made  so  vast  an  impression  on 
such  a  nation  we  must  believe,  yet  it  is  sometimes  an  exer 
cise  of  faith  to  believe  in  the  genius  of  Jefferson  for  any 
thing  but  party  management  and  personal  fascination. 

Politicians  out  of  power  are  apt  to  be  opposed  to  strong 
government ;  in  power,  they  feel  that  a  reasonably  strong 
government  is  necessary  to  the  execution  of  beneficent 
designs.  There  are  few  more  illustrious  cases  of  incon 
sistency  than  that  of  Jefferson,  the  austere  champion  of 
strict  construction,  when  he  nobly  stretched  or  rather 
broke  the  constitution  to  enlarge  his  country's  heritage  by 
1803.  the  purchase  of  Louisiana.  It  was  a  principal  aim  of 
Bonaparte's  policy  to  give  France  a  colonial  empire ;  he 
had  wrested  from  the  weakness  of  Spain  the  retrocession 
of  Louisiana,  but  after  the  brief  and  hollow  peace  of  Amiens 
war  again  impending  with  the  power  which  remained  mis 
tress  of  the  seas,  as  he  saw  that  his  transatlantic  prize 
must  infallibly  be  lost,  he  resolved  to  put  it  beyond  the 
grasp  of  Great  Britain  and  replenish  his  military  chest  at 
the  same  time  by  selling  Louisiana  to  the  United  States ; 
privately  promising  himself,  we  can  hardly  doubt,  to 
enforce  another  retrocession  when  he  was  left  master  of 
the  world.  The  constitution  clearly  gave  the  government 


in.  REPUBLIC.  159 

no  power  of  acquiring  foreign  territory,  and  had  Washing 
ton  or  Adams  been  President,  Jefferson  would  have  de 
nounced  the  assumption  of  such  power  as  usurpation  and 
as  evidence  of  monarchical  designs.  Being  himself  Presi 
dent,  he  over-rode  the  law,  looking  for  indemnity  to  a 
national  authority,  the  existence  of  which  it  would  have 
been  hard  for  him  to  reconcile  with  the  doctrine  of  the 
compact  of  the  States  promulgated  by  him  in  the  Kentucky 
manifesto.  Thus  a  vast  and  fruitful  territory  with  the 
mouth  of  the  Mississippi  was  added  to  the  domain  of  the 
United  States.  A  population  alien  in  race,  language, 
character,  and  religion,  was  at  the  same  time  incorporated. 
But  the  digestive  power  of  the  American  Republic  proved 
sufficient  for  political  assimilation,  and  of  French  Louisiana 
there  presently  remained  only  traces  prized  by  the  lover  of 
the  social  picturesque.  A  large  section  of  the  new  world 
was  thus  liberated  from  the  control  of  the  old  world  and 
annexed  t^  the  realm  of  the  American  experiment.  Un 
happily  there  was  also  a  great  extension  of  the  realm  of 
slavery. 

The  example  of  Bonaparte  in  its  turn  fired  American  1805-7. 
fancy.  Aaron  Burr,  the  assassin  of  Hamilton,  a  true  scion 
of  New  York  politics  as  they  then  were,  a  showy  and  rest 
less  adventurer  with  revolutionary  morals  and  a  gift  of 
misleading  youth,  and  by  grace  of  factious  cabal  Vice- 
President  of  the  United  States,  formed  a  design  of  sever 
ing  Louisiana  from  the  Republic  and  carving  out  for  him 
self  a  Napoleonic  empire  in  central  America.  But  his 
plot,  after  creating  some  noise  and  confusion,  ended  in  a 
farcical  catastrophe. 

Jefferson's  first  term  was   benign  and   prosperous.     It  1801-4. 
was  an  era  of  financial  success,  reduction  of  debt,  public 


160  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

frugality,  expansion  of  trade  and  manufactures,  sound  pro 
gress,  general  prosperity  and  contentment,  a  felicity  which 
it  owed  to  the  firm  government,  unlike  Jefferson's  ideal, 
by  which  it  had  been  preceded.  The  accession  of  Louisi 
ana  made  it  even  glorious.  It  could  disappoint  only  those 
whom  Jefferson's  jeremiads  over  the  encroachments  and 
corruptions  of  monocracy  under  the  first  two  Presidents, 
had  led  to  expect  a  new  heaven  and  a  new  earth.  On  his 
advent  to  power  the  President  had  proclaimed  that  there 
was  to  be  no  more  party ;  all  were  Republicans,  all  were 
Federalists.  The  pledge  implied  in  these  loving  words  he 
qualified  by  removing  some  Federalist  office  holders  and 
putting  Republicans  in  their  places,  and  he  has  been 
branded  as  the  author  of  the  spoils  system.  But  his 
removals  were  not  wholesale  nor  very  numerous,  and  he 
did  not  cease  to  pay  homage  to  the  better  principle  ;  he 
had  an  excuse  in  the  natural  claims  of  his  friends,  whom 
he  found  up  to  that  time  totally  excluded  from  Jhe  public 
service,  and  a  less  respectable  excuse  in  the  importunities 
of  partisans,  for  politics  had  now  become  a  trade  and  office 
seekers  began  to  swarm.  His  apology,  however,  raised  a 
laugh.  "If  a  due  participation  of  office,"  he  said,  "is  a 
matter  of  right,  how  are  the  vacancies  to  be  obtained  ? 
Those  by  death  are  few,  by  resignation  none.  Can  any 
other  method  than  that  of  removal  be  proposed  ?  " 

Jefferson  was  disposed,  as  some  other  popular  leaders 
have  been,  to  show  jealousy  of  the  judiciary,  as  a  power 
independent  of  the  people  and  its  chiefs.  Under  his 
administration  the  Circuit  Court  Act,  extending  the 
action  of  the  supreme  judiciary  and  the  number  of  judges 
1802.  appointed  for  life  was  summarily  repealed.  On  the  power 
of  the  Supreme  Court,  then  filled  with  judges  appointed 


in.  REPUBLIC.  161 

by  the  opposite  party,  he  could  not  fail  to  look  with  a 
jealous  eye.  The  impeachment  of  Justice  Chase  for  par-  1803. 
tisanship  on  the  bench  had,  no  doubt,  his  sympathy,  though 
he  was  too  cautious  to  show  his  hand.  The  collapse  of 
the  impeachment  left  the  Supreme  Court  more  indepen 
dent  than  ever.  But  in  the  Union  generally,  from  the  ten 
dency  to  make  the  judges  elective  arid  their  tenure  not 
during  good  behaviour  but  for  a  term  of  years,  the  depres 
sion  of  the  judiciary  in  the  period  succeeding  this  was  the 
rule. 

In  Jefferson's  second  term  fate  was  unkind  to  him.  The  1805-9. 
philanthropist  was  called  upon  to  deal  with  a  question  of 
peace  or  war  between  his  government  and  those  of  France 
and  Great  Britain.  Europe  had  become  the  scene  of  a 
vast  and  mortal  struggle  between  the  Napoleonic  empire 
and  the  independence  of  nations,  in  which  at  length  the 
British  navy  remained  the  sole  stay  of  independence. 
Napoleon's  only  law  was  his  will.  His  will  was  that 
there  should  be  no  neutrals.  It  was  declared  in  his  Berlin 
and  Milan  decrees,  and  was  carried  into  effect  by  the  ruth 
less  confiscation  of  American  ships  and  goods.  Great 
Britain  on  her  side  exercised  with  a  high  hand  against 
neutral  trade  belligerent  rights  which  the  policy  of  nations 
has  since  discarded.  As  the  French  Emperor  treated  her 
islands  so  she  treated  the  French  Empire  as  in  a  state  of 
legal  blockade,  and  intercepted  American  commerce  with 
its  members.  The  situation,  regarded  even  from  our  point 
of  view,  was  highly  complicated,  and  allowance  must  be 
made  for  the  difficulties  of  those  who  had  to  deal  with  it 
on  either  side.  The  Americans  might  claim  the  right  of 
neutral  trade.  But  in  this  case  the  right  could  not  be 
exercised  without  practically  taking  part  in  the  war,  since 


162  THE   UNITED   STATES. 

Great  Britain,  the  land  being  entirely  in  the  power  of  the 
enemy,  had  nothing  left  her  but  to  press  him  by  sea, 
which  she  could  do  only  by  cutting  off  his  trade.  To 
British  apprehension  the  neutral  trade  was  war  in  dis 
guise.  It  was  carrying  supplies  to  a  place  besieged.  John 
Randolph  of  Virginia,  no  Anglomania c,  painted  the  char 
acter  of  the  trade  with  eccentric  frankness.  Supposing 
the  choice  of  a  British  statesman  to  lie  between  the  two 
evils,  it  might  have  been  hard  to  say  which  was  worse, 
open  war  with  the  United  States,  or  the  aid  which  their 
neutral  trade  would  lend  to  France.  You  may  have  a 
right  to  traffic  on  a  battle-field;  but  you  will  have  diffi 
culty  in  exercising  it,  especially  if  the  battle-field  is  one 
in  which  nations  are  fighting  for  their  lives.  By  keep 
ing  off  the  scene  of  conflict  while  the  conflict  raged,  at 
the  same  time  closing  her  own  ports  against  combatants. 
America  might  have  avoided  collision  ;  she  could  hardly 
avoid  it  in  any  other  way. 

With  Great  Britain  there  was  another  cause  of  quarrel, 
the  impressmeiitrof  ~Brrtisirseamen  found  on  board  Ameri 
can  vessels.  Here  Gre~a^  Britain  was  clearly  in  the 
wrofrgr  She  ought  to  have  kept  her  seamen  by  increas 
ing  their  pay  and  putting  an  end  to  the  grievances  which 
1797.  produced  the  mutiny  of  the  Nore.  In  heartlessly  neglect 
ing  to  render  the  service  just  to  the  common  sailor,  and  at 
the  same  time  making  a  brutal  use  of  impressment,  aristo 
cratic  government  showed  its  dark  side.  It  is  true  that 
impressment  was  conscription  in  a  coarse  form,  and  that 
the  extreme  notion  of  indefeasible  allegiance  still  pre 
vailed.  But  the  practice,  however  lawful,  was  intolerable, 
and  its  offensiveness  was  sure  to  be  aggravated  by  the 
conduct  of  British  commanders  full  of  the  naval  pride  of 


HI.  REPUBLIC.  163 

their  nation  and  perhaps  irritated  by  the  loss  of  their 
crews ;  for  it  is  not  denied  that  many  British  seamen  were 
seduced  from  the  service  and  that  the  American  marine, 
both  mercantile  and  national,  was  largely  manned  in  this 
way.  We  hear  of  a  British  captain  having  his  whole  crew 
spirited  away  without  redress,  and  of  a  dozen  British  ships 
detained  at  once  by  loss  of  hands.  The  attack  of  the  Brit 
ish  Leopard  on  the  American  Chesapeake  for  the  purpose  1807. 
of  enforcing  impressment  was  a  flagrant  outrage,  and 
though  apology  was  made  and  satisfaction  was  tendered 
by  the  British  government,  this  was  not  done  in  a  way 
to  pluck  the  thorn  out  of  the  American  bosom.  It  was 
unfortunate  that  England's  foreign  minister  was  at  this 
time  the  surpassingly  brilliant  but  not  so  wise,  too  often 
sarcastic,  and  sometimes  insolent  Canning.  Feeling  was 
embittered  by  the  disclosure  of  a  pretended  plot  on  the 
part  of  the  British  government  to  sow  dissension  among  1809 
the  American  States  through  Henry,  a  low  adventurer, 
with  whom  Sir  James  Craik,  the  Governor  of  Canada,  had 
been  betrayed  into  imprudent  relations,  and  who  to  ground 
a  claim  on  the  government  for  money  had  been  tampering 
with  malcontents  in  New  England.  What  might  have 
been  done  by  courteous  explanations  and  friendly  appeals 
to  avert  the  quarrel  was  unhappily  not  done. 

Meantime  the  neutral  trade  in  spite  of  all  obstructions 
and  aggressions  was  very  gainful,  commerce  adjusted  itself 
to  the  risks,  British  cruisers  protected  American  merchant 
men  against  French  and  Spanish  privateers.  The  Ameri 
can  merchants  though  they  grumbled  were  willing  to  sub 
mit  ;  not  from  them  came  the  demand  for  war. 

"  Our  passion,"  said  Jefferson,  "  is  peace."  He  not  only 
recoiled  as  a  philanthropist  from  bloodshed,  but  as  a 


J^104  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

^       politician  he   with   reason    dreaded    military  propensities 

/and  sabre  sway,  ^uch  preparations  for  war_as_.he  could 
bejjidujc e_d , to-^gra^e_^werens c rupuTously  def  ensi  ve ,  and  his 
the  protecTiorr~oi^  ,the  coast  to  be 
launched  when  tho  invader  should  appear  excited  a  smile. 
Alone  among  all  statesmen  he  tried  to  make  war  without 
1807-8.  bloodshed  by  meSiis  of  an  embargo  on  trade.  American 
vessels  were  forbidden  to  leave  port,  foreign  vessels  were 
obliged  to  sail  in  ballast,  and  coasting  vessels  were  pro 
hibited  from  landing  their  cargo  at  any  but  American 
ports.  Total  denial  of  trade  would,  Jefferson  thought, 
bring  the  belligerents,  especially  commercial  England,  to 
reason.  By  his  great  majority  in  Congress  and  his  personal 
ascendancy  he  was  enabled  to  carry  this  extraordinary 
measure  and  to  enforce  observance  with  a  high  hand  and 
in  language  towards  recalcitrants  almost  autocratic.  An 
extraordinary  measure  it  was  and  more  easily  defensible 
perhaps  as  an  exercise  of  the  war  powers  of  the  central 
government  than  as  an  exercise  of  the  power  given  it  by 
the  constitution  to  regulate  commerce,  since  total  prohibi 
tion,  whatever  the  courts  of  law  might  say,  could  hardly  be 
called  regulation.  On  the  part  of  Jefferson  such  a  stretch 
of  authority  was  startling;  but  he  had  left  his  anarchical 
theories  on  the  steps  of  power,  and  had  begun  to  boast  of 
the  strength  of  republican  government.  Commerce  ceased. 
The  ships  lay  idle  at  the  wharves,  and  the  seafaring  pop 
ulation  lost  its  employment.  The  people  suffered  greatly 
by  the  withdrawal  of  the  profitable  though  hazardous  trade. 
The  measure  of  their  loss  was  given  by  the  crowd  of  ves 
sels  which,  when  the  embargo  was  lifted,  put  to  sea.  New 
England  was  to  some  extent  indemnified  by  the  develop 
ment  of  her  manufactures  under  the  stringent  protection 


in.  REPUBLIC.  165 

afforded  by  the  embargo.  But  on  Virginia  the  effect  was 
ruinous.  Yet  the  respect  of  the  people  for  the  central 
authority  was  on  the  whole  to  a  wonderful  extent  dis 
played  by  their  submission  to  the  law.  At  this  the  spirit 
of  Alexander  Hamilton  might  have  rejoiced.  But  Jef 
ferson's  government  became  the  object  of  hatred  and 
his  vast  popularity  waned.  England  remained  obdurate ; 
her  situation  was  too  desperate,  her  passions  too  highly 
inflamed  for  concession ;  her  strong  aristocratic  government 
was  not  easily  to  be  turned  from  its  purpose  by  the  suffer 
ings  of  trade  or  industry,  while  her  shipping  interest  gained 
by  relief  from  American  competition.  After  resorting 
to  measures  of  enforcement  which  on  the  part  of  a  mono- 
crat  he  would  have  deemed  flagrant  tyranny,  Jefferson 
was  at  last  compelled  to  give  up  the  embargo.  Weari 
ness  and  despondency  overcame  him.  He  let  fall  the 
reins  of  government  before  the  term  of  his  Presidency 
had  expired,  and  he  went  into  philosophic  retirement  at 
Monticello  whence  he  returned  no  more.  It  is  not  the 
highest  of  his  titles  to  fame  in  the  eyes  of  his  countrymen, 
but  it  may  be  not  the  lowest  in  the  court  of  humanity, 
that  he  sacrificed  his  popularity  in  the  attempt  to  find  a 
bloodless  substitute  for  war.  His  memory  recovered  from 
the  shock  and  his  reign  over  American  opinion  endured. 

Jefferson's  successor  was  his  shield-bearer,  Madison,  an-  1800. 
other  of  the  Virginians  whom  wealth  and  leisure  enabled 
to  devote  themselves  to  politics  and  to  supply  the  young 
Republic  with  statesmen.  He  had  been  at  first  a  Federal 
ist  and  a  fellow  worker  of  Hamilton  and  Jay,  but  he  had 
been  afterwards  attracted  to  Jefferson  and  had  perhaps 
recognized  in  Republican  principles  the  passport  to  power. 
By  American  writers  he  is  invested  with  the  highest 


THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

mental  gifts.  Yet  the  impression  which  he  makes  on  the 
)  ordinary  reader  is  rather  that  of  a  cultivated  and  some- 
\what  prim  mediocrity,  though  combined  with  a  clear 
understanding,  a  scientific  knowledge  of  politics,  states 
manlike  training,  and  a  surefooted  ambition.  At  his 
right  hand  was  Gallatin,  a  Swiss,  a  man  whose  standing 
was,  owing  to  his  foreign  origin,  below  his  ability,  once 
revolutionary  enough  to  bear  an  equivocal  part  in  the 
Whiskey  Insurrection,  now  grown  more  moderate  and  the 
great  financier  of  the  Republic. 

The  event  of  Madison's  Presidency  is  the  war  with 
1812  England.  Few  things  are  more  repulsive  or  less  profitable 
-^14  than  the  study  of  the  diplomatic  embroilment  in  which 
the  government  of  the  United  States  was  for  years  in 
volved  with  those  of  England  and  France  and  which  issued 
in  a  disastrous  war.  It  is  scarcely  disputed  by  American 
historians  that  the  injuries  received  by  American  com 
merce  at  the  hands  of  France  were  fully  as  great  as  those 
received  at  the  hands  of  England.  Napoleon  had  confis 
cated  American  shipping  and  goods  to  an  immense  amount 
and  coolly  reckoned  on  the  fruits  of  his  violence  as  reve 
nue.  He  seized  a  hundred  and  fifty  ships  in  one  year  alone. 
His  Rambouillet  decree  was  a  barefaced  proclamation  of 
rapine  to  which  effect  was  at  once  given  by  a  sweeping 
confiscation  of  American  vessels.  Not  only  was  his  will 
his  sole  law,  but  he  pretended  submission  to  no  other, 
whereas  England  at  all  events  recognized  international 
law,  and  held  herself  ready  to  atone  for  a  breach  of  it. 
But  England  was  hated,  France  was  not,  and  as  an  Amer 
ican  historian  says,  insults  and  injuries  which,  coming 
from  Great  Britain,  would  have  set  the  whole  country  on 
fire,  were  submitted  to  with  patience  and  even  with  the 


in.  REPUBLIC.  167 

pleasure  with  which  a  lover  sometimes  allows  himself  to 
be  trampled  on  and  plundered  by  an  imperious  and  profli 
gate  mistress.  Napoleon,  it  is  true,  did  his  best  by  false 
hood  and  subterfuge  to  lead  the  American  government  to 
believe  that  he  had  withdrawn  his  decrees  and  that  the 
British  Orders  in  Council  alone  stood  in  the  way  of  the 
recognition  of  neutral  rights.  But  the  American  govern 
ment  was,  to  say  the  least,  not  unwilling  to  be  deceived. 

A  new  influence,  making  for  war,  had  come  upon  the 
scene  of  American  politics.  Settlement  having  now 
crossed  the  whole  line  of  the  Alleghanies,  the  West,  fast 
becoming  the  great  West,  was  added,  and  the  union  from 
being  an  Atlantic  was  becoming  a  continental  confedera 
tion.  In  Kentucky,  the  population  drawn  mainly  from 
the  slave  States,  was  a  picturesque  but  formidable  mixture 
of  the  slave  owner  and  the  pioneer.  The  character  of  the 
Kentuckian  was  that  of  the  hunter  and  the  frontiersman 
with  an  imported  strain  of  the  slave  owner,  and  he  was 
always  engaged  in  murderous  war  with  Indians.  His  food 
was  salt  pork  without  vegetables ;  whiskey  he  drank  from 
morning  till  night.  That  he  should  be  quarrelsome  natu 
rally  followed.  His  amusements  were  horse-racing,  cock- 
fighting,  betting,  and  gambling,  to  the  last  of  which  he 
was  much  given.  He  was  always  fighting,  and  in  fighting 
he  kicked,*  tore,  bit,  and  gouged.  In  all  his  proceedings 
he  showed  a  lawless  vigour  which  might  prove  the  wild 
stock  of  civilized  virtue.  In  the  financial  field  he  pres 
ently  distinguished  himself  by  wild-cat  banking,  by  the 
delirium  of  paper  money,  and  consequent  repudiation. 
Removed  from  the  sea,  he  and  the  western  people  gener 
ally  had  not,  like  New  England,  a  commerce  to  be  ruined 
by  war,  and  of  the  English  tradition  and  sentiment  which 
still  lingered  at  Boston  he  was  utterly  devoid. 


168  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

As  were  the  people,  so  were  the  leaders  of  their  choice, 
and  of  these  the  foremost  was  Henry  Clay,  a  highly 
refined  Kentuckian,  yet  a  Kentuckian,  as  his  taste  for 
gambling,  among  other  characteristics,  showed.  Clay  put 
himself  at  the  head  of  a  set  of  young  politicians  who  were 
bent  on  forcing  the  government  into  war.  Calhoun,  from 
South  Carolina,  the  future  champion  of  the  slave  power, 
was  of  the  same  set.  But  Clay  was  the  most  fiery,  as  well 
as  the  most  fascinating.  Not  only  did  he  want  a  war  with 
England,  but  he  looked  forward  to  a  series  of  wars  to  be 
carried  on  till  one  of  the  nations  should  be  crushed,  and 
the  war  of  1812  was  among  the  achievements  which  he 
wished  to  be  inscribed  on  his  tomb.  The  President  did  not 
want  war,  but  he  wanted  re-election,  and  he  was  made  to 
feel  that  to  be  re-eLect&d  he  must  declare  war.  The  fact 
is  recorded  without  disguise.  We  have  come  down  from 
Washington  to  Madison.  When  Napoleon,  to  turn  the  scale 
against  England,  feigned  a  withdrawal  of  his  decrees, 
Madison  affected  to  believe  him ;  it  seems  not  certain  that 
he  did. 

1812  England  had  given  no  special  provocation  at  this  junc- 
1814.  ture.  On  the  contrary  she  was  showing  a  disposition  to 
make  concessions.  In  fact  the  Orders  in  Council  which 
stood  first  among  the  ostensible  causes  of  quarrel  had  been 
withdrawn  when  war  was  declared.  Clavtlien-  said  that 
war  must  be  waged  against  impressment^ though  he  after 
wards,  as  a  commissioner  treating^foT^oeace,  was  content  to 
let  that  issue  drop,  and  he  was  so  far  from  being  inflexible 
as  to  the  principle  concernedTTrlat,  as  Secretary  of  State 
at  an  after  day,  he  offered  Great  Britain  to  surrender 
deserters  from  her  military  and  naval  service  and  from 
her  mercantile  marine,  if  she  would  surrender  fugitive 


in.  REPUBLIC.  169 

slaves  who  had  taken  refuge  under  her  flag.  For  what 
cause  he  cared  little ;  war  he  would  have.  The  fingers  of 
the  Kentuckian  were  twined  in  the  locks  of  hated  England 
and  would  not  let  go  because  the  special  ground  of  quarrel 
happened  to  be  withdrawn.  England  was  sorely  pressed 
in  the  struggle  with  Napoleon.  Of  her  allies  none  were 
left  but  the  Spanish  people  and  Russia,  which  Napoleon  was 
preparing  to  invade.  The  opportunity  for  striking  her  was 
tempting,  and  Canada  seemed  an  easy  prey.  The  prospect 
of  sharing  Napoleon's  victories  would  also  have  its  attrac 
tion,  nor  is  there  anything  in  the  violence  of  a  brilliant 
tyranny  uncongenial  to  the  violence  of  such  democracy  as 
that  of  young  Clay.  These  probaJbly  were  the  real  motives 
of  the  war  which  was  made  bj_  Kentucky  and  the  ^lave 
owners,  and  agains^>vhicLNew  England  protested  from  the 
outsetTnotTan  commercial  grounds  alone,  though  on  her  . 
commerce  theTJeaviest  blows  were  _snr.eLto  fall,  but  because  -A 
it  would  bring  the  Republic  into  unnatural  alliance  with 
the  universal  tyrant  against  the  independence  of  nations 
and  the  rights  of  man.  On  the  independence  of  nations  and 
the  rights  of  man  Kentucky  and  the  slave  owners  probably 
set  little  store.  But  had  Napoleon  won,  the  turn  of 
America  would  have  come.  Nothing  seems  more  certain 
than  that  he  would  have  stretched  his  arm  across  the  At 
lantic,  reduced  the  United  States  to  vassalage,  and  enforced 
the  retrocession  of  Louisiana.  Of  all  things,  what  he  hated 
most  was  a  republic.  That  the  conquest  was  practicable, 
the  events  of  the  war  with  England  proved.  It  was- — 
unlucky  that  Erskine,  the  young  British  envoy  at  Wash 
ington,  in  his  eagerness  to  preserve  peace,  promised  conces 
sions  which  exceeded  his  instructions  and  was  disowned 
by  the  evil  genius  of  Canning  in  a-manner  which  inflamed 


170  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

the  quarrel.  The  war  was  not  national ;  it  was  made  by 
the  war-hawks,  as^HLay^ml  1iis~party  were  called.  In  the 
House  of  Representatives,  the  great  organ  of  popular  sen 
timent,  the  declaration  received  a  majority  of  only  thirty 
votes,  far  less  than  the  normal  majority  of  the  Democratic 
party,  fifteen  Republicans  voting  in  the  minority,  and 
it  passed  the  Senate  with  difficulty  and  only  by  the  close 
vote  of  nineteen  to  thirteen,  six  Republicans  voting  against 
war.  The  division  was  geographical,  the  North  being  in  a 
majority  of  two  to  one  against  the  war.  At  Baltimore  the 
mob  seconded  the  party  of  violence  by  riot  and  massacre. 

The  war  of  1812  while  it  rekindled  the  fires  of  unnatural 
hatred,  and  renewed  the  schism  of  the  Anglo-Saxon  race, 
was  to  both  combatants  barren  of  profit  and  honour.  Only 
the  "  war-hawk  "  politicians  who  did  not  shed  their  own  blood 
gained  in  political  advancement,  and  perhaps  by  the  exer 
cise  of  war  patronage.  Clay  and  Calhoun  had  confidently 
promised  the  Americans  the  conquest  of  Canada.  The 
militia  of  Kentucky,  Clay  said,  would  of  itself  suffice  for  the 
achievement.  Instead  of  this,  the  forces  the  Republic  put 
forth  in  the  invasion  were  repelled  by  a  small  body  of 
British  troops  aided,  not  as  appears  at  the  outset  zealously, 
by  the  local  militia,  and  Michigan  was  lost.  As  the  war 
went  on  the  Americans  learned  discipline,  were  better 
led,  and  were  more  successful,  but  Clay's  boast  remained 
unfulfilled.  The  French  Canadians  were  kept  true  to 
Great  Britain  by  the  same  influences  as  before,  and  helped 

gain  more  than  one  brilliant  victory  in  her  cause.  At  sea 
the  Americans  had  better  fortune.  The  British,  confident 
in  their  naval  prowess,  not  considering  that  the  Americans 
were  as  good  seamen  as  themselves,  better  shipbuilders, 
and  more  expert  as  gunners  forgetting,  too,  the  exploits  of 


in.  REPUBLIC.  171 

Paul  Jones,  ventured  on  frigate  duels  with  inferior  arma 
ments  and  lost  three  frigates,  one  of  which  was  carried 
into  an  American  port.  The  shock  was  far  greater  than 
the  loss,  and  was  but  half  counteracted  by  a  victory  in  a 
duel  on  equal  terms  between  the  Shannon  and  the  Chesa-  1813. 
peake.  On  the  other  hand  five  thousand  British  regulars 
under  Ross,  landing  on  the  American  coast,  paraded  the 
country  at  their  ease,  scattered  before  them  the  militia 
which  was  drawn  out  to  meet  them  at  Bladensburg  and  1814. 
took  Washington,  giving  thereby  one  more  proof  of  the 
ascendancy  of  discipline  in  war.  The  public  buildings  at 
Washington  were  burned,  an  act  of  folly  and  vandalism 
which  no  plea  of  retaliation  for  American  ravages  in 
Canada  could  warrant.  The  object  of  war  is  a  good  peace, 
and  the  fewer  thorns  are  left  in  the  heart  of  the  enemy 
the  better  the  peace  will  be. 

Ke'ntucky,  Tennessee,  and  the  Southern  fire-eaters  were 

1 

hot  for  the  war,  but  elsewhere  there  was  luke-warmness  or  \X 
worse.  The  ranks  of  the  army  were  unfilled,  the  finances  ' 
were  exhausted,  specie  payments  were  suspended,  the 
military  administration  had  disgracefully  broken  down. 
Roused  by  the  loss  of  the  three  frigates,  Great  Britain  put 
forth  her  naval  power,  and  the  American  ports  underwent 
strict  blockade.  Privateering,  though  destructive,  was  un- 
remunerative  and  even  cried  out  for  government  bounties 
to  keep  it  on  foot.  In  New  England  discontent  approached 
the  point  of  secession,  and  a  convention  of  New  England 
States  at  Hartford  not  only  protested  against  the  war  but 
demanded  an  organic  change  in  confederation.  ^lean- 
time  the  fortunes  of  Napoleon  sank  at  Moscow,  at  Leipsic, 
at  Vittoria.  England's  fleets  and  armies,  released  from 
the  strue^le  with  him,  were  set  free  for  action  in  America. 


172  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAI  . 

The  war  party  then  gave  way  and  envoys  were  sent  to 
Ghent  to  treat  for  peace.  It  was  a  peace  which  showed 
that  there  ought  to  have  been  no  war,  for  no  question  was 
settled,  nor  was  any  thing  surrendered  on  either  side.  Tli3 
questions  of  belligerent  rights  and  of  impressment,  about 
which  America  had  ostensibly  gone  to  war,  were  simply 
allowed  to  drop.  Mr.  Clay  was  one  of  the  American 
envoys.  He  did  his  best  to  make  the  negotiations  mis 
carry,  but  at  last  he  set  his  hand  to  the  treaty.  There 
were  those  in  England  who  desired  that  she  should  con 
tinue  the  war,  bringing  her  full  force,  now  at  liberty,  to 
bear,  and  send  Wellington  to  America.  But  if  the  result 
had  been  an  extension  of  her  American  territories  with  a 
deeper  entanglement  in  American  affairs,  the  gain  would 
have  been  a  loss.  That  there  was  no  real  object  to  be  at 
tained  was  Wellington's  own  judgment.  Peace  was  wel 
come  to  all  except  the  farmers  on  the  northern  frontier  of 
the  United  States  who  had  been  growing  rich  by  selling 
supplies  to  the  British  troops. 

There  was  no  ocean  cable  in  those  days.  Peace  had 
already  been  made  at  Ghent,  when  at  New  Orleans  General 
Pakenham,  possessed  apparently  with  the  same  blind  con 
fidence  which  had  been  shown  by  the  British  commander 
1815.  at  Bunker's  Hill,  led  his  troops  to  the  attack  of  the  impreg 
nable  and  almost  unapproachable  breastworks  with  which 
the  city  had  been  protected  by  the  skill  and  energy  of 
General  Andrew  Jackson,  who  appearing  on  the  scene  at 
a  decisive  moment,  showed  his  extraordinary  powers  of 
command.  The  British  soldiers,  formed  by  the  pedantry 
of  their  commander  in  close  column  and  unable  to  reach 
their  enemy,  fell  helplessly  under  the  fire  poured  upon 
them  in  perfect  security  by  the  riflemen  who  swarmed  be- 


in.  REPUBLIC.  173 

hind  the  breastworks.  The  death  of  the  British  Com- 
mander-in-Chief,  by  causing  confusion,  enhanced  the 
disaster.  At  the  single  point  where  the  veterans  did 
encounter  their  enemy,  he,  as  Jackson  himself  frankly  said, 
fled  before  them.  The  American  loss  in  killed  and  wounded 
was  thirteen.  Such  was  the  battle  of  New  Orleans.  It 
would  have  been  almost  as  much  of  a  battle  and  a  victory 
had  the  British  army  been  overwhelmed  by  the  Mississippi. 
But  the  affair  had  important  results,  for  it  made  General 
Jackson  the  idol  of  the  American  people,  and  the  auto 
cratic  President  of  the  United  States. 

The  war  is  sometimes  justified  on  account  of  its  sup 
posed  effect  in  consolidating  American  union.  To  make 
war  for  such  a  purpose  would  surely  be  a  satanic  policy. 
Instead  of  consolidation,  the  war  nearly  produced  seces 
sion,  to  the  very  verge  of  which  it  drove  New  England. 
The  true  instruments  of  consolidation  were,  not  the 
war,  but  the  improved  means  of  intercommunication^  the 
national  roads,  the  canals,  the  steamships,  the  railways,  to 
which  the  period  following  the  war  gave  birth,  as  well  as 
the  growing  activity  of  the  press,  and  the  other  intellectual 
agencies  which  overcome  geographical  distance.  The  fruit 
of  moral  or  political  effort  is  not  to  be  won  by  violence. 
A  second  war  of  independence  the  war  of  1812  has  been 
called,  but  how  could  America  be  made  politically  more 
independent  of  the  mother  country,  and  how  could  war 
sever  the  historical  bond  or  weaken  the  influences  which 
a  mother  country  will  always  exercise  over  a  colony,  let 
the  political  relation  be  what  it  will?  Mental  independ 
ence  was  promoted,  not  by  the  war,  but  by  migration 
westward  which  left  old  world  ideas  and  sentiments 
behind.  Violent  antipathies  like  passionate  attachments, 


174  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

as  Washington  said,  do  not  emancipate  but  enslave.  The 
schism  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  had  been  renewed,  and 
Canada,  instead  of  being  annexed,  had  been  estranged. 
On  industry  and  commerce  and  the  wealth  of  the  nation 
the  effects  of  war  are  always  the  same.  Such  is  the 
debt  of  gratitude  due  to  the  "  war-hawks."  It  will  not  be 
much  increased  if  to  the  material  results  of  the  conflict  we 
add  an  inflation  of  military  pride  which  there  was  nothing 
in  the  balance  of  victory  and  defeat  to  warrant,  but  which 
nevertheless  ensued. 

Twenty  years  afterwards  the  eyes  of  American  politi 
cians  desirous  of  aggrandizement  were  once  more  turned 
toward  the  British  dominions  in  North  America  by  a  Cana 
dian  rebellion  which  stretched  out  its  arms  for  aid  to  the 
republicanism  of  the  United  States.  But  national  ambition 
1837.  was  not  aroused.  Sympathy  was  confined  to  filibustering 
along  the  border.  A  bubble  of  war  which  the  burning 
of  the  Caroline,  an  American  armed  vessel,  by  Canadians 
had  blown,  burst  after  an  international  altercation  without 
harm.  There  still  remained  between  Great  Britain  and 
America  dangerous  questions  about  boundaries  in  Maine 
and  Oregon.  The  Oregon  question  at  one  time  assumed 
an  angry  form,  and  in  the  United  States  democratic  mobs 
and  "  war-hawks  "  were  shouting  "  fifty-four  forty  or  fight," 
while  their  British  counterparts,  such  as  Palmerston,  were 
or  affected  to  be  not  less  eager  for  the  fray.  But  diplo 
macy,  under  the  auspices  of  such  statesmen  as  Peel  and 
Webster,  brought  about  a  peaceful  settlement,  Canada  per 
haps  receiving  in  both  cases  less  than  her  due,  but  as  much 
as  could  be  expected  by  a  dependency  which  leaned  upon 
the  arm  of  the  Imperial  country,  itself  contributing  nothing 
to  the  armaments  of  the  empire.  The  settlement  was  made 


in.  REPUBLIC.  175 

easier  by  the  indifference  of  the  southern  fire-eaters  to  ex 
tensions  of  territory  in  the  north  which  would  turn  the 
political  balance  in  favour  of  freedom.  War  and  serious 
danger  of  war  being  at  an  end,  American  hatred  of  England 
might  have  subsided  had  not  Irish  immigrants  brought 
with  them  their  inveterate  feud  and  imposed  their  senti 
ment  on  the  politicians  and  press  of  the  United  States. 

After  Madison  came  Monroe,  the  last  of  the  Virginian  1817. 
line,  who  was  elected  with  ease  and  re-elected  virtually  by 
acclamation.  Since  the  day  of  his  Jacobin  accolade  he 
had  become  a  sober  and  commonplace  statesman.  Wash 
ington  was  his  model,  and  something  like  the  state  of  the 
Washington  period  reigned  again  at  the  White  House. 
Monroe's  title  to  renown  is  the  doctrine,  stamped  with 
his  name,  which  proclaims  the  new  world  independent  of 
the  old.  The  American  dependencies  of  Spain  had  now 
rise»  in  revolt  against  the  Imperial  country,  while  in  Spain 
herself  the  Holy  Alliance  dominating  over  Europe  had  by 
the  hand  of  the  restored  Bourbons  of  France  crushed 
parliamentary  government  and  reinstalled  absolute  mon 
archy.  There  was  reason  to  fear  that  the  Alliance  meant 
to  extend  its  policy  of  reaction  to  South  America  and 
perhaps  to  place  a  Bourbon  on  the  throne  of  a  South 
American  Empire.  It  was  to  close  the  door  against  any 
thing  of  this  kind  that  Monroe  put  forth  his  manifesto, 
which  warns  the  European  powers  that  the  western  hemi 
sphere  is  no  longer  a  field  either  for  their  colonization  or 
for  their  political  interference.  Any  attempt  on  the  part 
of  a  European  power  to  control  the  destiny  of  an  Amer 
ican  community  the  American  President  declares  will 
be  viewed  as  a  manifestation  of  an  unfriendly  disposi 
tion  towards  the  United  States ;  implying  thereby,  be  it 


176  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP.  in. 

observed,  that  the  United  States  are  the  guardian  power 
of  the  hemisphere.  It  may  be  that  Monroe  was  not  the 
sole  or  the  first  promulgator  of  the  doctrine.  But  by  him 
it  was  propounded  most  clearly  and  at  a  juncture  which 
gave  it  practical  force.  Great  Britain  and  the  United 
States  were  now  acting  in  union.  For  Great  Britain, 
whose  function  it  has  always  been  to  preserve  the  balance 
of  tendencies  as  well  as  of  power  in  Europe,  was  opposed 
to  the  domination  of  the  Holy  Alliance  as  she  had  been  to 
that  of  Napoleon,  and  Canning,  as  her  foreign  minister, 
was  beginning  to  show  his  liberal  side. 

Clay's  ardent  spirit  would  have  led  him  at  once  to  give 
the  embrace  of  fraternity  to  the  new-born  Republics  of 
South  America.  More  cautious  counsels  prevailed  and 
confined  the  action  of  the  government  to  the  promulgation 
of  the  Monroe  doctrine  and  a  prompt  recognition  of  South 
American  independence.  It  soon  appeared  even  to  Clay 
himself  what  sort  of  embrace  that  of  the  South  American 
Republics  would  have  been.  He  had  been  transported 
with  the  glorious  spectacle  of  eighteen  millions  of  people 
struggling  to  burst  their  chains  and  be  free.  He  soon  had 
reason  to  confess  that  the  result  of  bursting  chains,  in  the 
case  of  those  who  are  unfit  for  freedom,  is  not  freedom 
but  a  change  of  chain.  Webster  may  have  meant  to  cap 
Clay  as  well  as  to  show  his  cultivated  feeling  for  the 
parent  of  literature  and  art  when  in  a  grand  oration  he 
proposed  to  send  a  commissioner  as  an  envoy  of  sympathy 
to  insurgent  Greece.  Here  the  Washingtonian  tradition 
of  non-interference  in  European  affairs  prevailed.  Indeed 
if  the  Monroe  doctrine  was  to  be  respected  and  Europe 
was  to  keep  her  hands  off  America,  it  was  necessary  that 
America  should  keep  her  hands  off  Europe. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY. 

riTHE  eight  years  of  Monroe's  Presidency  were  a  halcyon 
period  after  the  storm  of  war ;  they  were  years  of  re 
vived  commerce,  of  return  to  specie  payments,  of  renewed 
immigration,  of  the  continued  expansion  westward  which 
was  not  only  enlarging  the  area  of  equalized  wealth  and 
the  field  of  the  great  political  experiment,  but  shifting 
the  centre  of  power  from  New  England  and  Virginia 
towards  the  west.  There  was  a  general  absence,  during 
these  years,  of  great  party  questions  and  a  lull  in  party 
strife  which  caused  Monroe's  Presidency  to  be  called  the 
era  of  good  feeling.  The  calm,  however,  was  broken  by 
one  blast  which,  though  it  died  away  for  the  time,  was  the 
premonitory  gust  of  a  tremendous  storm.  Free  and  slave 
States  had  so  far  been  admitted  to  the  Union  in  pairs,  one 
slave  State  and  one  free,  so  that  the  political  balance 
between  the  two  interests  was  preserved,  not  in  the  House 
of  Representatives,  where  the  representation  was  by  popu 
lation,  but  in  the  Senate,  where  each  State,  large  or  small, 
had  two  members.  The  demand  of  Missouri,  a  part  of  the 
Louisiana  purchase,  over  which  slavery  prevailed,  to  be 
admitted  as  a  State,  threatened  to  upset  the  balance,  and 
awakened  the  dormant  but  mortal  antagonism  between 
slavery  and  freedom.  Conscience,  indeed,  though  drugged 

177 


178  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

by  policy  had  never  entirely  slumbered.  Among  the  Qua 
kers  of  Pennsylvania  it  had  remained  awake.  The  oppo 
nents  of  slavery  moved  for  its  exclusion  from  Missouri  as 
a  condition  of  her  admission  to  the  Union.  The  struggle 
between  them  and  the  friends  of  slavery  was  long  and 
angry.  It  brought  the  national  House  into  collision  with 
the  federal  Senate.  When  apparently  composed,  it  broke 
out  again  in  a  new  form.  But  at  length  fear  for  the  sta 
bility  of  the  Union,  which  by  this  time  had  become  an 
object  of  general  worship,  prevailed,  and  a  compromise  was 
effected  by  which  all  north  of  the  latitude  thirty-six,  thirty, 
saving  territory  included  in  Missouri,  was  secured  for  free 
dom,  and  all  south  of  that  line  was  given  up  to  slavery. 
1820.  The  political  balance  was  preserved  by  the  simultaneous 
admission  of  Maine.  The  truce  thus  obtained  lasted,  so 
far  as  the  national  parties  were  concerned,  for  twenty  years, 
proving  by  its  duration  the  paramount  importance  attached 
by  the  American  people  to  their  Union.  But  three  omi 
nous  results  of  the  struggle  still  remained.  In  the  first 
place  the  geographical  line  had  been  drawn  between  the 
domain,  social  and  political,  of  slavery  and  that  of  freedom. 
In  the  second  place  it  had  been  shown  that  whatever  pains 
might  be  taken  to  designate  slavery  as  a  purely  domestic 
institution  over  which  the  national  government  had  no 
jurisdiction,  and  with  which  the  national  conscience  was 
unconcerned,  the  fact  was  that  the  question  was  national 
and  one  with  which  the  national  government  would  in  the 
end  be  compelled  to  deal.  In  the  third  place  slavery  had 
shown  itself  no  longer  as  a  vanishing  relic  of  the  past,  but 
as  a  permanent  interest  and  power.  Whitney's  invention 
of  the  cotton  gin  had  enormously  increased  the  production 
of  cotton,  and  with  it  the  value  of  slave  labour  and  the 
addiction  of  the  South  to  the  system. 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  179 

The  lull  of  party  was  no  lull  of  personal  ambition  or 
of  personal  contests  for  the  Presidency.  Now  we  see 
in  full  force  the  Presidential  fever  and  its  effects  on  the 
character  and  conduct  of  public  men.  Soon  in  place  of  the 
Congressional  caucus,  through  which  the  politicians  of  each 
party  had  hitherto  nominated  candidates  for  the  Presidency, 
comes  the  popular  convention,  at  first  local  and  then 
national,  with  the  grand  campaign  of  party  with  its 
sinister  accessories  such  as  we  have  it  at  the  present 
day.  Now  culminates  the  reign  of  the  "  machine,"  with  its 
retinue  of  office-seeking  workers,  first  perfected  in  New 
York  by  DeWitt  Clinton  and  Van  Buren,  with  their 
Albany  Regency  and  their  "  Bucktails."  Foremost  in  the 
arena  were  Henry  Clay  the  Kentuckian,  Daniel  Webster 
the  New  Englander,  and  John  C.  Calhoun  of  South  Caro 
lina/  Clay  was  perhaps  the  first  consummate  party  leader 
of  the  Congressional  and  platform  type,  Jefferson  having 
worked,  not  on  the  platform,  but  in  the  closet  and  through 
the  press.  He  was  a  paragon  of  the  personal  fascination 
now  styled  magnetism.  Magnetic,  indeed,  his  manner  and 
voice  must  have  been  if  they  could  make  the  speeches  that 
he  has  left  us  pass  for  the  most  cogent  reasoning  and  the 
highest  eloquence.  Yet  multitudes  came  from  distances, 
in  those  days  immense,  to  hear  him,  A  cynical  critic  said 
that  Clay  could  get  more  people  to  listen  to  him  and  fewer 
people  to  vote  for  him  than  any  other  man  in  the  Union. 
He  however  did  get  many  votes  though  never  quite  enough. 
His  power  of  winning  the  hearts  of  men  was  unique.  When 
at  last  he  missed  his  prize  by  losing  the  election  for  the 
Presidency  his  partisans  wept  like  children ;  one  of  them 
is  said  to  have  died  of  grief.  He  was  ardently  patriotic, 
after  the  war-hawk  fashion,  but  the  Presidency  was  always 


180  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

in  his  thoughts  and  its  attraction  accounts  for  the  per 
turbations  of  his  political  orbit.  He  said  that  he  would 
rather  be  right  than  be  President ;  but  it  has  been  too  truly 
remarked  that  even  at  the  moment  of  that  memorable 
utterance  he  was  thinking  more  of  being  President  than 
of  being  right.  His  policy  and  sentiments  were  intensely 
American  and  by  the  cosmopolitans  would  now  be  desig 
nated  as  jingo.  He  was  a  protectionist  on  what  lie  deemed 
patriotic  grounds,  and  the  chief  author  of  a  system  to  which 
Hamilton  had  only  moderately  inclined.  He  was  for 
national  expenditure  on  public  works,  for  national  grants 
of  money  to  the  States,  for  everything  that  could  magnify 
the  nation.  The  Union,  as  the  palladium  of  national 
greatness,  was  his  idol,  and  his  proudest  achievements  as  a 
statesman  were  compromises  by  which  the  Union  was  saved 
for  a  time  when  it  had  been  imperilled  by  collision  between 
the  slave  States  and  the  free.  Over  each  of  these  com 
promises  he  drew  the  brilliant  rainbow  of  complacent  elo 
quence,  which,  however,  proved  no  guarantee  against  the 
flood.  A  native  of  the  great  slave  State  of  Virginia, 
settled  in  Kentucky  where  slavery  existed  though  it  did 
not  predominate,  he  seems  at  least  to  have  felt  the  evils  of 
the  system,  and  he  had  done  himself  credit  by  opposition 
to  it  in  his  earlier  days.  But  the  highest  and  the  absorb 
ing  object  of  his  affection  was  national  greatness  embodied 
in  the  Union. 

As  Henry  Clay  was  a  genuine,  though  adopted,  son  of 
Kentucky,  so  Daniel  Webster  was  a  genuine  son  of  New 
England.  His  character  was  cast  in  the  Puritan  mould, 
and  formed  by  the  New  England  school  system  under 
which  he  had  been  a  teacher  as  well  as  a  pupil.  He  was 
grave,  staid,  and  in  the  cast  of  his  character  moral  and 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  181 

devout.  In  his  later  years  he  was  given  to  running  care 
lessly  into  debt  and  like  many  other  men  of  his  day  too 
fond  of  wine.  As  an  orator  of  reason  he  has  no  superior 
if  he  has  an  equal  in  the  English  language.  It  is  difficult 
at  least  to  say  what  political  speech  can  vie  in  logical  force 
and  impressiveness  with  his  speech  defending  the  Union 
in  reply  to  the  southern  separatist  Hayne,  or  what  forensic 
speech  excels  in  the  same  qualities  his  speech  for  the  prose 
cution  in  the  murder  case  of  White.  By  the  speech  in  1830. 
reply  to  Hayne  he  produced  a  great  and  permanent  effect 
on  the  political  sentiment  of  the  American  people. — 
"While  the  union  lasts,  we  have  high,  exciting,  gratifying 
prospects  spread  out  before  us,  for  us  and  our  children. 
Beyond  that  I  seek  not  to  penetrate  the  veil.  God  grant 
that,  in  my  day  at  least,  that  curtain  may  not  rise.  God 
grant  that  on  my  vision  never  may  be  opened  what  lies 
behind.  When  my  eyes  shall  be  turned  to  behold  for  the 
last  time  the  sun  in  heaven,  may  I  not  see  him  shining  on 
the  broken  and  dishonoured  fragments  of  a  once  glorious 
union ;  on  States  dissevered,  discordant,  belligerent ;  on  a 
land  rent  with  civil  feuds,  or  drenched  it  may  be  in  frater 
nal  blood !  Let  their  last  feeble  and  lingering  glance 
rather  behold  the  gorgeous  ensign  of  the  Republic,  now 
known  and  honoured  throughout  the  earth,  still  full  high 
advanced,  its  arms  and  trophies  streaming  in  their  original 
lustre,  not  a  stripe  erased  or  polluted,  not  a  single  star 
obscured,  bearing  for  its  motto  no  such  miserable  interroga 
tory  as  What  is  all  this  worth?  nor  those  other  words  of 
delusion  and  folly  Liberty  first,  and  Union  afterwards,  but 
everywhere  spread  all  over  in  characters  of  living  light 
blazing  in  all  its  ample  folds  as  they  float  over  the  sea  and 
over  the  land  and  in  every  wind  under  the  whole  heavens 


182  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

that  other  sentiment  dear  to  every  true  American  heart  — 
Liberty  and  Union,  now  and  forever,  one  and  inseparable." 
These  words  thrilled  through  all  American  hearts  at  the 
time,  remained  engraved  in  all  American  hearts  forever. 
We  must  bear  in  mind  their  influence  and  the  force  of  the 
sentiment  to  which  they  appealed  when  we  find  the  Ameri 
can  people  wavering  between  morality  and  the  Union. 
Webster's  economical  and  financial  speeches  are  also  first 
rate  of  their  kind.  His  style  has  been  compared  to  the 
strokes  of  a  trip  hammer,  which  his  sentences  resembled  in 
measured  force  but  not  in  monotony.  The  majesty  of 
intellect  sat  on  his  beetling  brow  and  he  had  the  look  and 
port  of  Jove.  He  was  and  felt  himself  a  king.  It  is  told 
of  him  that  when  one  of  his  notes  had  fallen  due,  he  majes 
tically  waved  his  hand  and  said  "  Let  it  be  paid."  All  men 
bowed  down  to  him ;  all  men  crowded  to  hear  him.  He 
swayed  the  opinions  of  all  men ;  but  he  did  not,  like  Clay, 
win  their  hearts.  He  never  was  a  great  party  leader,  nor 
was  he  ever  a  hopeful  candidate  for  the  Presidency.  It 
must  be  added  that  his  moral  strength  was  not  equal  to 
his  power  of  mind.  In  regard  to  the  great  moral  question 
of  slavery,  his  desire  of  the  Presidency  at  last  overcame 
his  principle.  In  his  general  sentiments  and  opinions  he 
was  a  descendant  of  the  old  Federalist  party,  a  republican 
without  being  a  democrat,  a  believer  in  property  as  a  quali 
fication  for  political  power,  an  upholder  both  in  his  State 
and  in  the  federation  of  the  conservative  parts  of  the  con 
stitution,  as  well  as  devoutly  loyal  to  the  Union. 

A  figure  in  some  respects  more  striking  than  that  of 
either  Clay  or  Webster,  and  one  to  which  a  melancholy 
interest  attaches,  is  that  of  John  C.  Calhoun  of  South 
Carolina.  Calhoun  was  a  man  of  Scotch-Irish  origin,  with 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  183 

the  fervent  but  sombre  energy  characteristic  of  that  race. 
By  temper  he  was  a  political  Calvinist,  while  South  Caro 
lina  gave  him  for  a  creed  slavery,  of  which  she  was  the 
centre  and  the  soul.  As  a  speaker  he  impressed,  not  by 
anything  that  appealed  to  the  imagination,  but  by  intense 
earnestness  and  logical  force.  On  his  face  and  character 
there  was  a  shade  of  sadness  which  deepened  as  his  career 
took  a  more  tragic  turn.  No  one  questioned  his  purity  or 
sincerity,  yet  in  his  course  also  the  effect  of  the  Presiden 
tial  fever  may  be  traced.  He  set  out  with  Clay  as  one  of 
the  war  party  of  1812,  devoted  to  national  greatness.  He 
walked  at  first  in  the  trodden  path  of  ambition;  was 
Vice-President,  was  Secretary  of  State,  and  had  the  Presi 
dency  in  view.  But  a  cloud  came  over  his  prospects  and 
he  was  gradually  led  to  fall  back  on  slavery  as  his  peculiar 
platform,  to  identify  himself  with  the  institution,  to  be 
come  not  only  its  defender  but  its  propagator,  and,  in  its 
interest,  the  upholder  of  State  right.  He  was  the  first 
statesman  who,  discarding  not  only  the  philosophic  con 
demnation  of  slavery  fashionable  among  the  old  republi 
cans  of  the  South  but  the  apologies  of  its  moderate  uphold 
ers,  proclaimed  that  slavery  was  a  positive  good,  that  it 
was  the  only  relation  possible  between  the  white  and  black 
races,  and  even  that  the  system  of  society  based  on  it  was 
the  best  and  alone  stable,  while  the  system  based  on  free 
dom  and  equality  was  unstable  and  anarchic.  "  Many  in 
the  South,"  he  said,  "  had  once  believed  that  slavery  was  a 
moral  and  political  evil.  But  that  folly  and  delusion  are 
gone.  We  see  it  now  in  its  true  light  and  regard  it  as 
the  most  safe  and  stable  basis  for  free  institutions  in  the 
world."  He  was  even  ready  to  maintain  that  it  gave  the 
labourer  more  than  was  given  him  by  free  labour,  while  it 


184  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

exempted  society  from  the  disorders  and  dangers  arising 
out  of  the  conflict  between  labour  and  capital.  Calhoun 
became  the  idol  and  the  guiding  star  of  the  slave-owning 
aristocracy,  above  all  of  the  hot  Southern  youth.  When  he 
died  there  was  laid  over  his  grave  at  Charleston,  a  great 
slab  of  marble  inscribed  with  the  single  word  "  Calhoun  " 
as  the  sufficient  epitaph  of  his  greatness.  He  was  one  of 
the  men  who  are  born  to  bring  questions  to  an  issue.  He 
distinctly  saw  that  on  the  two  sides  of  the  geographical 
line  which  separated  freedom  from  slavery  there  were  two 
communities  opposed  to  each  other  in  social  and  political 
structure,  in  character,  sentiment,  and  interest,  which 
though  yoked  together  by  the  union  were  not  united.  His 
proposal  of  two  Presidents,  one  for  the  free  States,  the 
other  for  the  slave  States,  each  with  a  veto  on  all  national 
legislation,  was  impracticable  and  grotesque,  but  it  pointed 
true  to  the  nature  of  the  problem. 

Oratory  and  orators  ruled  the  hour.  The  chief  scene  of 
the  great  debates  of  this  period  was  the  Senate,  always 
attractive  of  the  highest  ability.  Its  number  was  less  than 
fifty,  but  the  audience,  though  small,  was  of  the  choicest, 
and  on  grand  occasions  the  galleries  were  crowded  by 
people  not  only  from  Washington  but  from  distant  cities. 
Of  the  struggle  between  freedom  and  slavery  the  Senate 
was  the  natural  arena,  because  there,  representation  being 
by  States,  the  forces  were  evenly  balanced,  whereas  in 
the  House  of  Representatives,  the  population  of  the  free 
States,  increasing  faster  than  that  of  the  slave  States,  had 
a  great  preponderance  notwithstanding  the  constitutional 
compromise  which  gave  slavery  two  votes  for  every  three 
slaves.  Thus,  in  regard  to  the  two  groups  of  States,  the 
Senate  was  the  safeguard  of  the  federal  against  the  national 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  185 

principle.  Nor  were  Clay,  Webster,  and  Calhoun  the 
only  Senators  of  mark.  Not  far  beneath  them  was  Bentou 
from  Missouri,  which  was  a  western  and  semi-slave  State, 
apt  to  breed  statesmen  neutral  or  wavering  on  the  ques 
tion  of  slavery  and  caring  most  for  the  Union.  Ben  ton 
was  for  thirty  years  a  Senator.  He  was  of  coarse  mould 
compared  with  the  other  three,  but  of  great  power,  gigan 
tic  industry,  and  possessed  of  an  extensive  knowledge 
of  politics,  which  he  sometimes  grotesquely  displayed ; 
perhaps  the  first  thorough  specimen  of  a  politician,  with  a 
virtue  genuine  but  not  adamantine,  and  a  patriotism  which 
yielded  only  to  the  strong  exigencies  of  party,  it  might  be 
in  the  sincere  belief  that  the  party  was  the  country. 
Hardly  to  be  named  with  these  men  was  John  Randolph, 
a  Virginian  of  high  family,  with  more  than  the  arrogance 
of  his  class,  who  used  to  come  into  the  Senate  in  his  hunt 
ing  dress  with  his  hunting  whip  in  his  hand,  and  behave 
as  if  he  were  in  his  kennel ;  a  man  of  natural  ability,  with 
out  good  sense  or  power  of  self-control,  firmly  attached 
to  no  party  or  even  opinion,  keen  and  reckless  in  in 
vective,  the  terror  of  those  at  whom  his  lean  finger  was 
pointed  in  debate,  at  last  a  political  wreck  and  almost  a 
maniac.  Randolph  sometimes  told  wholesome  truths  in 
a  pungent  way. 

Apart  from  slavery  the  great  question  was  the  tariff. 
Before  the  war  New  England  had  been  commercial,  and  as 
such  in  favour  of  free  trade.  The  war,  suspending  her 
commerce  turned  her  to  manufactures  to  which  it  afforded 
strict  protection.  Peace  bringing  an  influx  of  British 
goods  made  New  England  manufacturers  crave  for  a 
protective  tariff.  Clay  on  patriotic  grounds  was  the 
ardent  advocate  of  what  he  styled  the  American  system, 


186  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

though  he  was  reminded  by  Webster  that  the  system,  by 
his  own  showing,  had  not  been  American  but  European. 
"  This  favourite  American  policy,  sir,"  said  Webster,  "  is 
what  America  has  never  tried,  and  this  odious  foreign 
policy  is  what  we  are  told  foreign  States  have  never  pur 
sued.  Sir,  that  is  the  truest  American  policy  which  shall 
most  usefully  employ  American  capital  and  American 
labour,  and  best  sustain  the  whole  population.  With  me 
it  is  a  fundamental  axiom  that  is  interwoven  with  all  my 
opinions  that  the  great  interests  of  the  country  are  united 
and  inseparable,  that  agriculture,  commerce,  and  manu 
factures  will  prosper  together  or  languish  together,  and 
that  all  legislation  is  dangerous  which  proposes  to  benefit 
one  of  these  without  looking  to  consequences  which  may 
fall  on  the  others."  Webster  at  first  opposed  protection, 
and  upheld  with  admirable  breadth,  clearness,  and  cogency 
the  doctrine  of  Adam  Smith.  There  is  nothing  better 
on  the  side  of  free  trade  than  his  speeches.  He  crushed 
the  fallacy  of  the  balance  of  trade,  showing  by  a  familiar 
example  that  if  the  excess  in  value  of  imports  over  ex 
ports  proved  the  trader  to  be  a  loser,  the  fruits  of  the  most 
gainful  voyage  might  be  set  down  as  a  loss.  He  ex 
pounded  the  true  nature  of  commerce  as  being  not  a 
gambling  among  nations  for  a  stake,  to  be  won  by  some 
and  lost  by  others,  not  tending  to  impoverish  one  of  the 
parties  to  it  while  it  enriched  the  other,  but  making  all 
parties  gain,  all  parties  alike  profit,  all  parties  grow  rich. 
He  showed  that  in  buying  foreign  articles  we  do  not  en 
courage  foreign  labour  to  the  prejudice  of  our  own,  since 
every  such  article,  being  earned  by  our  own  labour,  is  as 
much  the  product  of  our  own  labour  as  if  we  had  manu 
factured  it  ourselves.  "  I  know,"  he  said,  "  it  would  be 


TV.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  187 

very  easy  to  promote  manufactures,  at  least  for  a  time,  but 
probably  only  for  a  short  time.  If  we  might  act  in  dis 
regard  of  other  interests  we  could  cause  a  sudden  transfer 
of  capital  and  a  violent  change  in  the  pursuits  of  men. 
We  could  exceedingly  benefit  some  classes  by  these  means ; 
what  then  would  become  of  the  interests  of  others?"  If 
Adam  Smith  had  been  before  him  in  all  this,  he  gave  it 
new  force  by  his  eloquence  and  put  on  it  the  stamp  of 
practical  statesmanship.  Webster's  arguments  have  lost 
none  of  their  weight  though  he  afterwards  showed  his 
want  of  moral  stability  by  striking  his  flag  to  protection 
and  rather  lamely  defending  his  inconsistency  on  the  plea 
that,  though  his  principles  remained  unchanged,  protection 
having  then  become  the  established  system,  there  was 
nothing  for  him  but  to  accept  it  and  look  to  the  interests 
of  his  own  constituents.  The  great  speech  of  Clay  on 
American  industry  is  a  declamation  based  throughout  on 
the  assumption  that  protection  is  patriotic,  as  though  any 
economical  measure  could  be  patriotic  which  was  not  pro 
ductive  of  wealth  to  the  whole  nation.  Clay's  knowledge 
of  economical  history  and  of  history  in  general  may  be 
measured  by  his  reference  to  Spain  as  a  nation  which  had 
declined  owing  to  her  lack  of  a  protectionist  system.  His 
clearness  of  economic  vision  may  be  measured  by  his  dic 
tum,  uttered  in  defence  of  protectionism,  that  "  the  great 
desideratum  in  political  economy  is  the  same  as  in  private 
pursuits ;  that  is,  what  is  the  best  application  of  the 
aggregate  industry  of  a  nation  that  can  be  made  honestly 
to  produce  the  largest  sum  of  national  wealth?"  He 
could  not  have  stated  more  clearly  the  main  argument  of 
his  opponents.  With  more  reason  might  Clay  point  to  the 
practice  of  other  nations  and  notably  to  that  of  England 


188  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

which  still  had  and  was  destined  for  many  years  longer  to 
have  her  corn  laws  and  Navigation  Act.  It  must  also  be 
remembered  in  justice  to  Clay  and  others  who  were  trying 
to  force  manufactures  that  the  evils  of  the  factory  system 
had  not  then  been  seen  on  a  large  scale.  Further  it 
must  be  said  that  Clay  regarded  protection  as  temporary, 
and  perhaps  could  hardly  have  been  expected  to  foresee 
that  what  was  granted  as  temporary  would,  by  the  com 
bined  force  of  the  favoured  interests,  be  made  eternal. 
Some  demurred,  apparently  with  reason,  to  the  assump 
tion  by  Congress  of  a  power  of  imposing  taxes  for  any 
purpose  but  that  of  revenue.  The  constitution  gave  Con 
gress  power  to  regulate  commerce,  but  not  to  regulate 
industry  or  to  force  the  people  to  leave  one  industry  for 
another.  The  vices  of  protectionism  soon  appeared.  In 
1828  a  conjunction  of  sinister  interests  carried  by  log 
rolling  for  their  own  benefit  a  tariff  which  was  justly  styled 
the  tariff  of  abominations.  We  are  told  that  members 
of  Congress  voted  for  the  bill  at  the  bidding  of  their  con 
stituents  while  they  were  opposed  to  its  objects,  foresee 
ing  the  abuses  which  it  entailed,  and  that  it  offered  the 
means  of  wide-spread  bribery  in  the  elections.  We  see 
incidentally  that  the  elective  system  had  disclosed  another 
of  its  fatal  liabilities,  and  that  the  representative  instead 
of  being  a  man  of  superior  lights,  picked  out  for  the  great 
work  of  legislation,  was  becoming  a  mere  delegate  and  the 
mouth-piece  of  his  constituency  without  free  judgment  or 
conscience  of  his  own. 

With  reference  to  this  tariff  of  1828  Benton  in  his 
history  of  the  Senate  says,  "tariff  bills  each  exceeding 
the  other  in  its  degree  of  protection  have  become  a  regular 
appendage  of  our  Presidential  elections,  coming  round  in 


IT.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  189 

every  cycle  of  four  years  with  that  returning  event." 
McDuffie,  from  South  Carolina,  raised  with  an  apocalyp 
tic  vehemence  the  veil  of  the  future.  "  Sir,  when  I  con 
sider  that  by  a  single  Act  like  the  present  from  five  to 
ten  millions  of  dollars  may  be  transferred  annually  from 
one  part  of  the  community  to  another,  when  I  consider 
the  disguise  of  disinterested  patriotism  under  which  the 
basest  and  most  profligate  ambition  may  perpetrate  such 
an  act  of  injustice  and  political  prostitution,  I  cannot  hesi 
tate  for  a  moment  to  pronounce  this  very  system  of  indi 
rect  bounties  the  most  stupendous  instrument  of  corruption 
ever  placed  in  the  hands  of  public  functionaries.  It  brings 
ambition  and  avarice  and  wealth  into  a  combination  which 
it  is  fearful  to  contemplate,  because  it  is  almost  impossible 
to  resist.  Do  we  not  perceive  at  this  very  moment  the 
extraordinary  and  melancholy  spectacle  of  less  than  one 
hundred  thousand  capitalists  by  means  of  this  unhallowed 
combination  exercising  an  absolute  and  despotic  control 
over  the  opinions  of  eight  millions  of  free  citizens  and  the 
fortunes  and  destinies  of  ten  millions?  Sir,  I  will  not 
anticipate  or  forbode  evil.  I  will  not  permit  myself  to 
believe  that  the  Presidency  of  the  United  States  will  ever 
be  bought  and  sold  by  this  system  of  bounties  and  pro 
hibitions  ;  but  I  must  say  that  there  are  certain  quarters 
of  this  Union  in  which,  if  a  candidate  for  the  Presidency 
were  to  come  forward  with  the  Harrisburg  tariff  in  his 
hand,  nothing  could  resist  his  pretensions  if  his  adversary 
were  opposed  to  this  unjust  system  of  oppression.  Yes, 
sir,  that  bill  would  be  a  talisman  which  could  give  a 
charmed  existence  to  the  candidate  who  would  pledge  him 
self  to  support  it ;  and  although  he  were  covered  with  all 
the  '  multiplying  villanies  of  nature,'  the  most  immaculate 


190  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

patriot  and  profound  statesman  in  the  nation  could  hold 
no  competition  with  him  if  he  should  refuse  to  grant  this 
new  species  of  imperial  donative."  Mr.  McDuffie,  coming 
from  the  South  which  exported  and  did  not  manufacture, 
was  perhaps  enlightened,  as  his  opponents  were  blinded, 
by  local  interest.  In  the  economical  firmament  it  was  still 
early  dawn.  To  Clay  and  his  friends  the  policy  of  foster 
ing  native  industries  till  they  were  able  to  stand  alone 
might  well  seem  wise.  Experience  had  not  yet  shown 
that  the  protection  once  given  would  never  be  willingly 
resigned,  and  that  a  combination  of  privileged  interests 
log-rolling  for  each  other  would  be  sure  to  prevail  over 
the  public  good.  But  it  may  surely  be  said  that  for  a 
nation  so  active,  so  intelligent,  so  inventive,  perfect  indus 
trial  liberty  would  always  have  been  best. 

Not  unconnected  with  the  question  between  free  trade 
and  protection  was  that  of  the  sale  of  public  lands.  Should 
they  be  regarded  as  a  national  property  out  of  which  profit 
was  to  be  made  by  the  federal  government,  or  should  they 
be  thrown  open  freely  to  the  settler  ?  The  protectionists 
generally  leant  to  the  former,  free  traders  to  the  latter  and 
more  liberal  side.  The  effect  of  throwing  freely  open  all 
the  lands  of  the  west  to  settlement  was  to  diminish  the 
value  of  the  lands  in  the  east  and  by  drawing  away  labour 
westwards  to  enhance  its  price  to  the  eastern  employer. 
After  a  temporary  obstruction  of  settlement  and  some 
gambling  and  speculation  in  public  lands  the  higher 
interest  prevailed. 

National  expenditure  on  improvements,  such  as  the 
great  Cumberland  road,  was  an  issue  on  which  those  who 
championed  a  strong  nationality  and  a  liberal  interpreta 
tion  of  the  constitution  in  favour  of  the  central  government 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  191 

were  pitted  against  the  jealous  upholders  of  strict  right  and 
strict  construction.  In  this  case  also  the  opponents  of  the 
policy  might  have  pointed  to  the  dangers  of  corruption. 

For  the  succession  to  Monroe  there  were  four  com-  1824. 
petitors :  John  Quincy  Adams,  son  of  the  President ; 
Henry  Clay ;  Crawford,  a  powerful  and  crafty  politician, 
who  showed  the  tenacity  of  the  Presidential  fever  by  re 
maining  a  candidate  when  he  had  been  stricken  with 
paralysis ;  and  Andrew  Jackson,  whose  blood-red  star  was 
now  rising  above  the  political  horizon  and  threatening 
with  extinction  those  of  the  politicians  who  had  evoked 
the  war  spirit  for  the  purposes  of  their  own  ambition. 
Jackson  had  ninety  electoral  votes,  Adams  eighty-four, 
Crawford  forty-one,  and  Clay  thirty-seven.  No  one  hav 
ing  a  clear  majority  the  election  was  thrown  by  the  article 
of  the  constitution  providing  for  the  case  into  the  House 
of  Representatives,  while  the  decision  was  thrown  into  the 
hands  of  Clay,  who  though  out  of  the  pale  of  election 
himself,  as  the  choice  of  the  House  was  confined  to  the 
three  having  the  highest  number  of  votes,  commanded 
followers  enough  to  turn  the  scale.  Clay  decided  in 
favour  of  Adams.  The  Jacksonians  contended  that  their 
man  having  the  largest  number  of  votes  was  the  choice  of 
the  people,  whose  fiat  the  House  ought  to  have  registered. 
To  which  the  answer  was,  first,  that  there  was  nothing 
to  show  that  in  a  contest  between  Jackson  and  Adams  by 
themselves  Jackson  would  have  had  the  majority,  and  in 
the  second  place  that  to  make  a  plurality  decisive  would 
be  to  abrogate  an  article  of  the  constitution.  Clay,  per 
haps  too  conscious  of  rectitude,  ventured  to  accept  the 
Secretaryship  of  State  from  the  man  whom  his  influence 
had  made  President.  The  Jacksonians  cried  out  that  he 


192  THE   UNITED   STATES.  .  CHAP. 

had  been  bought  and  the  calumny  systematically  and 
unscrupulously  worked  by  his  enemies  pursued  him  to  his 
grave. 

1825.  Monroe  was  the  last  President  of  the  Virginian  line, 
John  Quincy  Adams  the  last  from  New  England.  The 
centre  of  power  was  passing  from  the  east  to  the  west. 
Adams  was  a  genuine  New  Englander  of  the  Puritan 
stock,  austerely  moral,  from  his  boyhood  laboriously 
self-trained,  not  only  staid  but  solemn  in  his  teens,  in 
tensely  self-conscious,  ever  engaged  in  self-examination, 
the  punctual  keeper  of  a  voluminous  diary,  an  invariably 
early  riser,  a  daily  reader  of  the  Bible  even  in  the  White 
House,  scrupulously  methodical  and  strictly  upright  in  al: 
his  ways ;  but  testy,  unconciliatory,  unsympathetic,  abso 
lutely  destitute  of  all  the  arts  by  which  popularity  is  won. 
His  election  does  the  highest  credit  to  the  respect  of  the, 
electors  for  public  virtue  unadorned.  The  peculiar  features 
of  his  father's  character  were  so  intensified  in  him  that  ho 
may  be  deemed  the  typical  figure  rather  than  his  father.  In 
opinions  he  was  a  Federalist  who  having  broken  with  his 
party  on  the  question  of  foreign  relations  and  the  embargo 
had  been  put  out  of  its  pale  but  had  retained  its  general 
mould.  As  he  was  about  the  last  President  chosen  for 
merit  not  for  availability,  so  he  was  about  the  last  whose, 
only  rule  was  not  party  but  the  public  service.  So  strictly 
did  he  observe  the  principle  of  permanency  and  purity  in 
the  Civil  Service,  that  he  refused  to  dismiss  from  office 
a  Postmaster-General  whom  he  knew  to  be  intriguing 
against  him.  The  demagogic  era  had  come  but  he  would 
not  recognize  its  coming.  He  absolutely  refused  to  go  on 
the  stump,  to  conciliate  the  press,  to  do  anything  for  the 
purpose  .of  courting  popularity  and  making  himself  a 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  193 

party.     His  obstinacy  was  fatal  to  his  ambition  but  is  not 
dishonourable  to  his  memory. 

Adams  was  a  candidate  for  the  usual  second  term.  But  1828. 
he  stood  no  chance  against  Jackson  whose  candidacy  had 
commenced  on  the  morrow  of  the  last  election.  Nobody 
stands  much  chance  against  a  successful  soldier  in  a 
country  where  military  glory  is  rare.  In  the  United 
States  there  have  been,  if  we  include  Washington,  five 
distinct  soldier  Presidents,  while  a  military  record  has 
contributed  to  other  elections  and  nominations.  In  Eng 
land,  an  old  war  power,  but  one  man  can  be  said  to  have 
been  made  prime  minister  by  glory  in  war,  and  the  Duke 
of  Wellington  was  not  merely  a  soldier,  since  besides 
having  been  in  Parliament  as  a  young  man  and  Irish 
Secretary,  he  was  almost  the  chief  political  adviser  of 
monarchical  and  aristocratic  Europe.  Military  glory  more 
over  is  outside  the  pale  of  ordinary  rivalries  and  escapes 
the  envy  which  in  all  democracies  has  great  force.  Jack 
son,  though  he  had  once  been  in  Congress,  as  we  have 
seen,  and  had  vented  his  jealous  spleen  on  Washington, 
was  a  fighter,  with  an  iron  will  and  great  powers  of  com 
mand,  ill  educated,  destitute  of  the  knowledge  and  the 
habits  of  a  statesman,  with  an  uncontrolled  temper  and 
almost  as  much  swayed  by  passion  as  any  Indian  chief, 
though,  like  many  an  Indian  chief,  he  could  bear  himself 
when  he  pleased  with  dignity  and  even  with  grace.  That 
he  had  beaten  the  British  at  New  Orleans  was  his  title  to 
the  headship  of  the  nation,  and  he  had  not  lessened  his 
popularity  by  the  lawless  execution  of  two  Englishmen, 
Ambrister  and  Arbuthnot,  or  by  some  acts  of  equally 
lawless  aggression  on  Spanish  territory ;  outrages  against 
which  a  moral  minority  in  Congress  had  protested  in  vain, 


194  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

while  John  Quincy  Adams,  swayed  probably  by  his  dislike 
of  England,  had  for  once  deviated  from  his  moral  course 
and  helped  to  whitewash  the  man  who  was  destined  to 
oust  him  from  the  Presidential  chair.  But  a  greater  force 
even  than  that  of  military  renown  was  bearing  on  Andrew 
Jackson  to  the  Presidency.  Hitherto  the  Republic  had 
not  been  democratic.  The  common  people  had  been  con 
tent  with  their  votes  and  had  left  government  to  an  aris 
tocracy  of  intellect  drawn  largely  from  the  bar.  But  now 
they  desired  to  govern.  They  were  beginning  to  suspect 
that  they  were  fooled  by  intellect  and  to  wish  to  see  one 
of  themselves  in  power.  Andrew  Jackson  was  one  oi 
themselves ;  he  was  not  only  the  old  hero  but  "  Old  Hick 
ory,"  a  plain  honest  man  who  would  govern  by  a  good 
homely  rule,  sweep  away  abuses,  and  see  that  no  more 
tricks  were  played  by  superior  cunning  upon  the  people. 
To  rule,  a  multitude  must  be  incarnate  in  a  man,  and  the 
American  multitude  was  incarnate  in  Andrew  Jackson. 
The  old  hero's  transcendent  availability  drew  around  his 
standard  a  host  of  machine  politicians,  office-seekers,  and 
journalists,  to  blow  his  trumpet  and  organize  the  cam 
paign  in  his  favour.  Jackson  Committees  were  formed 
all  over  the  country  to  carry  on  the  crusade,  and  were 
aided  by  a  partisan  press  inspired  from  a  centre.  This 
was  perhaps  the  first  regularly  organized  campaign. 
Feeling  was  red  hot  and  calumny  was  rife.  Adams  was 
charged  with  monarchism,  with  aristocracy,  with  corrup 
tion,  with  libel,  with  odious  wealth,  with  insolvency,  with 
greediness  of  public  money,  with  being  wrong  in  his  public 
accounts,  with  charging  for  fictitious  journeys,  with  using 
government  servants  to  electioneer  for  him,  with  corrupt 
ing  the  civil  service,  with  employing  the  federal  patronage 


tv.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  195 

to  influence  elections,  with  charging  the  public  for  a 
billiard  table  which  he  put  in  the  White  House,  with 
patronizing  duelling  (while  Jackson  was  a  desperate 
duellist),  with  having  quarrelled  with  his  father,  with 
acting  as  procurer  to  the  Emperor  of  Russia,  with  having 
married  an  Englishwoman.  On  the  other  hand  aspersions 
were  cast  on  Jackson's  somewhat  irregular  marriage,  which 
goaded  him  to  fury.  The  result  was  that  Jackson  got  178 
electoral  votes  to  83  for  Adams.  The  difference  in  the 
popular  vote  was  not  so  large,  Adams  having  508,064 
to  Jackson's  648,273. 

Jackson,  and  "  triumphant  democracy "  in  his  train,  1829 
made  their  victorious  entry  into  Washington  with  an 
enormous  crowd  largely  composed  of  office-seekers  who 
had  worked  for  them  in  the  campaign.  An  eye-witness 
has  described  the  sight  as  very  like  the  inundation  of 
Rome  by  the  northern  barbarians,  except  that  in  this  case 
the  tumultuous  tide,  instead  of  coming  from  the  north, 
came  from  the  west  and  the  soutfi.  "  Strange  faces,"  says 
the  same  narrator,  "filled  every  public  place,  and  every 
face  seemed  to  bear  defiance  on  its  brow."  The  city  as 
well  as  the  lobby  swarmed  with  Jacksonian  editors.  On 
the  morning  of  the  inauguration  the  neighbourhood  of  the 
capitol  was  an  agitated  sea  of  heads,  and  it  was  necessary 
to  repress  the  surging  crowd  by  stretching  a  ship's  cable 
across  the  flight  of  steps.  After  the  inauguration  came 
a  reception.  There  was  orange  punch  by  the  barrelful, 
but  as  the  waiters  opened  the  door  a  rush  was  made,  the 
glasses  were  broken,  the  pails  of  liquor  were  upset  and 
the  semblance  of  order  could  be  restored  only  by  carrying 
tubs  of  punch  into  the  garden  to  draw  off  the  crowd  from 
the  rooms.  Men  stood  in  muddy  boots  on  the  damask 


196  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

covered  chairs  to  get  a  sight  of  the  President.  "  The 
reign  of  King  Mob  seemed  triumphant,"  says  Judge  Story, 
who  was  glad  to  escape  from  the  scene. 

The  seat  of  government  having  been  stormed  by  Gen 
eral  Jackson  and  his  train  was  at  once  given  up  to  pillage. 
"  To  the  victors  belong  the  spoils,"  was  the  saying  oi 
Marcy,  a  New  York  manager,  not  of  Jackson ;  but  the 
sequel  of  Jackson's  victory  was  its  first  memorable  illustra 
tion.  A  ruthless  proscription  swept  the  Civil  Service  tc 
make  places  for  Jackson's  political  soldiery.  Jefferson, 
not  without  excuse,  made  removals  by  tens  ;  Jackson  made 
them  by  hundreds  and  without  excuse  since  he  followed  <r, 
President  who  in  his  dealings  with  the  Civil  Service  was 
not  pure  only  but  a  purist.  Webster  tells  that  the  num 
ber  of  dismissals  was  reckoned  at  not  less  than  2,000. 
There  was  a  reign  of  terror  in  Washington,  no  civil  ser 
vant  feeling  sure  for  a  day  of  his  head ;  a  whisper  killed, 
and  perfidy  was  sometimes  added  to  the  cruelty  of  turning 
an  innocent  official,  perhaps  in  advanced  age,  upon  the 
street.  No  merit  or  record  would  save  you.  Major  Mel 
ville  was  a  veteran  of  the  revolution  and  had  been  one  of 
the  Boston  Tea-Party,  yet  he  was  turned  out  of  a  place  in 
the  Custom  House  which  he  had  held  for  many  years. 
Those  who  could  get  access  to  Jackson  had  a  chance  of 
escaping  by  appeals  to  his  vanity.  One  official  is  said  to 
have  saved  his  head  by  begging  for  the  old  hero's  old  pipe. 
Thus  was  inaugurated  the  spoils  system  together  with 
the  trade  of  place-hunting  by  a  President  who  came 
probably  with  a  sincere  desire  of  clearing  government 
from  corruption  and  of  making  simple  honesty  the  rule, 
and  of  whom  it  must  in  justice  be  said  that  his  own  hands 
were  perfectly  clean. 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  197 

The  new  court  was  soon  convulsed  by  a  court  quarrel. 
Eaton,  a  member  of  Jackson's  Cabinet,  had  married  a 
widow  who  before  her  marriage  had  lived  in  Washington 
as  Peggy  O'Neil,  and  whose  reputation  under  her  maiden 
name  had  been  doubtful.  The  wives  of  other  cabinet 
ministers  and  the  great  ladies  of  Washington  refused  to 
visit  Mrs.  Eaton.  Jackson  made  it  a  personal  quarrel  and 
threw  himself  into  it  with  his  usual  fury.  He  is  supposed 
to  have  been  fired  by  the  recollection  of  the  aspersions 
cast  at  the  time  of  the  election  on  his  own  marriage  to  a 
wife  to  whom  he  was  tenderly  attached.  Mr.  Van  Buren, 
being  a  widower  and  having  no  female  fastidiousness  to 
combat,  was  able  to  call  on  Mrs.  Eaton  and  thereby  to 
establish  himself  firmly  in  Jackson's  favour.  But  other 
ministers  failed  to  overcome  the  virtuous  pride  of  their 
ladies  and  a  Cabinet  crisis  was  the  result.  The  Dutch 
ambassador  was  threatened  with  a  demand  for  his  recall, 
because  his  wife  had  refused  to  sit  by  the  side  of  Mrs. 
Eaton.  Whatever  may  have  been  Mrs.  Eaton's  real  char 
acter,  and  whether  the  scruples  of  those  who  declined  her 
society  were  overstrained  or  not,  thanks  may  be  due  to 
the  Washington  ladies  who  in  the  catastrophe  of  public 
principle  stood  out  for  the  purity  of  domestic  life. 

Van  Buren,  a  sagacious,  smooth,  and  wily  manager  of 
New  York  politics,  was  the  chief  of  Jackson's  regular 
counsellors  and  no  doubt  knew  how  to  play  upon  his 
temper.  But  to  his  regular  counsellors  Jackson  preferred 
a  set  of  familiars  who  were  called  his  Kitchen  Cabinet. 
These  men,  experts  in  wire-pulling,  used  their  arts  to  keep 
alive  the  sentiment  which  had  carried  their  chief  to  power, 
inspired  his  partisan  press,  and  traduced  his  enemies 
through  its  organs. 


198  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

Jackson  regarded  himself  as  the  only  direct  and  genuine 
representative  of  the  people.  The  authority  of  Congress 
and  of  the  Supreme  Court  he  seemed  to  think  unaccred 
ited  by  the  popular  will  and  almost  usurped.  He  tram 
pled  on  the  Senate,  the  dignity  of  which  made  it  the 
special  object  of  his  aversion;  he  flouted  the  judiciary, 
and  would  have  trampled  on  it  if  he  had  dared.  Congenial 
to  his  policy  was  the  doctrine  that  members  of  Congress 
were  delegates,  bound  to  deliver  the  mandate  of  the  people 
whose  opinions  and  passions  the  autocrat  could  control. 
Whatever  was  eminent  and  independent  was,  in  the  eyes  of 
Jackson,  as  in  those  of  other  demagogic  despots,  an  offence, 
and  his  instinctive  tendency  was  to  level  it  to  the  ground. 
This  feeling  probably  entered  largely  into  the  war  which 
he  waged  against  the  National  Bank.  The  Bank,  created 
by  Hamilton  in  the  interest  of  central  government  as  well 
as  in  that  of  finance,  had  been  abolished  by  the  Jeffersonian 
party  whose  motive  likewise  was  probably  political.  But 
another  Bank  had  been  founded  to  meet  the  financial 
difficulties  entailed  by  the  war  and  restore  the  soundness 
of  the  paper  currency.  The  time  for  the  renewal  of  the 
charter  was  now  not  far  off,  and  no  opposition  was  ex 
pected.  The  Bank  had  given  the  nation  a  sound  currency, 
it  had  been  honourably  managed  and  enjoyed  the  confi 
dence  of  commerce.  A  Congressional  Committee  of 
enquiry  reported  that  the  government  deposits  were  safe 
in  its  keeping.  Nor  does  the  National  Bank  appear  to 
have  meddled  with  politics,  while  it  seems  certain  that  the 
private  banks  did.  But  the  suspicion  that  its  political 
influence  had  been  used  on  the  wrong  side  was  breathed 
by  its  enemies  into  Jackson's  ear,  and  he,  who  was  totally 
ignorant  of  finance,  inserted  words  of  threatening  import 


IV.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  199 

into  a  message  to  Congress.  Clay,  now  in  fierce  opposi 
tion,  unwisely  took  up  the  gauntlet  in  the  name  of  the 
Bank  and  made  the  renewal  of  the  charter  a  political 
issue.  In  doing  this  he  stood  himself  on  weak  ground 
since  in  his  fervidly  democratic  youth  he  had  taken  part 
in  the  abolition  of  the  former  Bank.  Jackson  welcomed 
the  war,  which  was  waged  with  the  utmost  fury  on  both 
sides.  He  and  his  staff  denounced  the  Bank  as  a  mono 
poly,  as  a  money  power,  as  a  political  engine  of  the  enemies 
of  the  people,  as  an  ally  of  the  rich  against  the  poor.  By 
this  time  he  had  no  doubt  talked  himself  into  a  belief  that 
all  this  was  true.  At  length  the  President  directed  his 
Secretary  of  the  Treasury,  Duane,  to  remove  the  govern 
ment  deposits  from  the  Bank,  probably  against  the  law ; 
and  when  that  minister  refused,  he  was  dismissed,  and 
Taney,  more  compliant  and  afterwards  notorious  in  another 
way",  was  put  in  his  room.  The  renewal  of  the  charter  1832. 
was  vetoed  by  the  President,  and  Clay's  party  not  having 
a  two-thirds'  majority  in  the  Senate  to  carry  the  Bill  over 
the  veto,  the  Bank  fell.  The  government  deposits  were 
distributed,  not  of  course  without  political  favouritism, 
amongst  State  Banks,  where  they  furnished  the  means  and 
stimulus  for  reckless  speculation,  notably  in  the  public 
lands.  Wild-cat  banks  multiplied,  especially  in  the  ad 
venturous  West,  and  flooded  the  country  with  their  de 
lusive  paper.  Alarmed  at  the  inflation  Jackson  put  forth 
an  edict  that  nothing  but  gold  or  silver  should  be  taken  in 
payment  of  taxes  or  other  debts  to  government.  The  sud 
denness  of  the  check  brought  on  a  crash,  and  there  fol 
lowed  the  tremendous  financial  crisis  of  1837,  with  the 
universal  suspension  of  cash  payments,  and  general  wreck 
of  commerce  and  industry ;  the  suffering  falling  chiefly, 


200  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

as  it  always  does,  on  those  poorer  classes  whose  champion 
against  the  plutocratic  tyranny  of  the  Bank  Jackson 
averred  and  no  doubt  believed  himself  to  be.  By  the 
mouths  of  Clay  and  Webster  reason,  sound  finance,  and 
justice  protested  in  vain.  The  popularity  of  the  old  hero 
swept  away  all  opposition.  His  ignorance  of  finance  was 
taken  by  his  masses  as  a  pledge  of  his  probity  and  good 
sense.  On  his  freedom  from  personal  corruption  they 
might  with  justice  rely.  Nor  was  it  difficult  for  him  to 
raise  a  mob  against  a  corporation  which  could  be  de 
nounced  as  a  political  and  social  organ  of  the  money 
power,  though  as  a  matter  of  fact  a  large  proportion  of 
the  stock  was  held  by  people  of  small  incomes  or  by 
charitable  institutions. 

In  tlie  course  of  the  struggle  Jackson's  autocratic  notions 
were  fully  developed.  He  laid  it  down  that  in  the  inter 
pretation  of  the  constitution,  including  those  articles  of  it 
which  defined  the  extent  of  his  own  powers,  his  guide  was 
to  be  his  own  conscience,  an  assumption  which  would  have 
put  him  above  law.  When  the  Senate  passed  a  resolution 
of  censure  on  his  dictatorial  proceedings  he  took  them 
sharply  to  task  for  presuming  to  arraign  his  conduct,  which 
he  said  they  had  no  right  to  do  except  in  the  form  of  im 
peachment.  Nor  was  his  revenge  slaked  till  his  party  hav 
ing  ultimately  gained  a  majority  in  the  Senate  under  his 
henchman  and  successor  in  the  Presidency,  he  made  that 
hated  assembly  taste  the  cup  of  humiliation  to  the  dregs 
by  the  erasure  of  the  resolution  from  their  journal,  in  mani 
fest  defiance  of  the  article  in  the  constitution  which  re 
quires  a  record  of  proceedings  to  be  kept.  His  fury  in  this 
battle  was  inflamed  by  his  personal  hatred  of  Clay  and 
Calhoun ;  of  Clay,  who  had  deprived,  and  as  he  swore,  cor- 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  201 

ruptly  defrauded  him  of  the  Presidency  on  the  occasion 
when  Adams  was  elected ;  of  Calhoun,  who,  as  Jackson 
learned  from  a  malicious  informant,  had  as  a  member  of 
Adams'  Cabinet  condemned  his  outrages  in  Florida  and 
his  execution  of  Ambrister  and  Arbuthnot. 

With  Calhoun  as  the  representative  of  South  Carolina 
and  her  unhappy  interests  Jackson  was  brought  into  colli 
sion  in  a  better  cause,  and  one  in  which  his  force  of  character 
served  the  Republic  well.  The  protectionist  tariff  while  it 
enriched  or  was  supposed  to  enrich  the  manufacturing  cities 
of  New  England,  impoverished  the  South,  which  manufac 
tured  nothing,  and  being,  like  all  slave-owning  communi 
ties,  poor  in  the  midst  of  apparent  wealth,  could  ill  bear 
the  addition  of  fiscal  burdens.  South  Carolina,  the  land 
of  slavery  Hotspurs,  rose  against  the  tariff,  planted  her 
feet  on  State  right,  assumed  a  menacing  attitude,  and  pro 
ceeded  to  carry  into  effect  the  doctrine  laid  down  by 
Jefferson  in  his  draft  of  the  Kentucky  resolutions  by  a 
nullification  of  the  federal  law.  Secession  and  civil  war 
seemed  imminent,  but  Jackson  proclaimed  in  tones  of 
thunder  that  the  Union  must  be  preserved,  and  at  once 
prepared,  if  the  law  was  resisted  by  South  Carolina,  to 
execute  it  by  arms.  He  is  said  even  to  have  threatened 
to  hang  Calhoun,  though  he  would  have  found  the  sum 
mary  execution  of  a  United  States  senator  under  the 
shadow  of  the  Capitol  a  more  dangerous  operation  than 
the  summary  execution  of  two  helpless  Englishmen  on  a 
lonely  strand.  The  sages  of  the  Senate,  with  Clay  at 
their  head,  in  the  end  brought  about  one  of  those  compro 
mises  of  which  Clay  was  the  grand  artificer.  A  Force  Bill, 
which  empowered  the  President  to  put  down  resistance  in 
South  Carolina  by  arms  was  coupled  in  its  passage  with  a 


202  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

Bill  reducing  the  obnoxious  tariff.  It  is  doubtful  whether 
South  Carolina,  having  extorted  this  concession,  did  not 
really  come  out  victorious  after  all.  Webster  and  others 
thought  that  she  did,  and  were  for  bringing  her  to  her 
knees  before  any  concession  was  made.  Jackson's  heart 
was  with  slavery,  as  on  other  occasions  he  plainly  showed, 
though  above  all  things  he  was  for  the  Union.  In  the  case 
of  Georgia  and  the  Creek  Indians,  where  the  State,  in  the 
process  of  improving  the  Indians  off  the  face  of  the  earth, 
had  set  at  nought  a  treaty  made  with  them  by  the  federal 
government,  Jackson  failed  to  assert  the  authority  of  the 
nation.  But  he  probably  regarded  a  treaty  with  the 
Indians  and  the  claims  of  the  weaker  race  to  justice  as 
things  of  small  account. 

The  force  which  never  failed  Jackson  was  again  shown 
with  honour  and  advantage  to  his  country  in  exacting  from 
France  the  indemnity  due  for  former  aggressions  on  Ameri 
can  commerce  which  the  French  Chambers  were  unwilling 
to  pay.  A  private  hint  which  the  French  government  gave 
him  to  strengthen  its  hand  in  dealing  with  the  Chambers, 
by  the  use  of  a  little  energetic  language  was  taken,  as  it 
was  sure  to  be,  with  a  vengeance.  But  neither  this  service 
nor  any  firmness  which  Jackson  may  have  shown  in  uphold 
ing  the  Union  against  nullification,  could  make  up  for  the 
terrible  and  lasting  mischief  done  to  public  life  and  charac 
ter  by  the  ascendancy  of  such  a  man,  by  the  spoils  system 
which  he  introduced,  by  the  practices  and  examples  of  the 
agents  whom  he  brought  forward,  by  the  personal  press 
and  the  machinery  of  slander  which  were  employed  in  his 
interests,  by  the  venom  which  he  infused  into  party  con 
tests,  and  by  his  contempt  of  constitutional  right.  His 
equestrian  statue,  prancing  in  front  of  the  White  House, 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  203 

seems  to  beat  down  the  constitution  under  its  hoofs.  Not 
the  least  among  the  evils  of  his  reign  was  the  systematic 
corruption  of  the  press.  It  degraded,  as  Webster  said,  the 
press  and  the  government  at  once.  Fifty  or  sixty  editors 
of  leading  journals,  if  Webster  may  be  believed,  were  ap 
pointed  to  offices,  and  the  propagation  of  opinions  favour 
able  to  the  government  through  the  press  had,  according 
to  the  same  grave  authority,  become  the  main  administra 
tive  duty.  From  Jackson  and  his  circle  a  spirit  of  vio 
lence  seemed  to  have  gone  out  over  the  whole  land. 
Rowdyism,  rioting,  duelling,  and  lynch  law  were  never  so 
rife.  Outrages  were  committed  in  the  streets  of  Washing 
ton  and  if  the  victim  was  Jackson's  political  opponent  pro 
tection  was  sought  in  vain.  Fraud  and  violence  became 
common  in  elections.  A  race  in  which  courage  is  not 
rare,  which  has  proved  its  valour  in  many  scenes,  surely 
does  itself  wrong  by  worshipping  mere  courage,  even  when 
allied  with  strength  of  will,  in  such  a  character  as  Andrew 
Jackson. 

The  Jacksonian  era  was  naturally  the  era  of  people- 
worship,  and  of  application  to  the  multitude  of  language 
applied  in  the  Bible  to  the  Almighty  ;  as  though  ignorance 
and  passion  millions  of  times  multiplied  could  be  divine  ; 
as  though  the  will  of  any  man  or  of  any  number  of  men, 
apart  from  reason  and  conscience,  could  constitute  right  or 
absolve  from  guilt  those  who  in  bowing  to  it  did  wrong. 
Jefferson  had  gone  far  in  this  direction,  but  he  had  still 
been  loyal  to  public  reason,  or  what  he  took  for  it,  and  had 
not  paid  slavish  homage  to  mere  will.  "  Mr.  President,"  1832. 
said  Webster  in  his  speech  on  the  message  sent  down  bv 
Jackson  with  his  veto  on  the  chartering  of  the  Bank,  "  we 
have  arrived  at  a  new  epoch.  We  are  entering  on  experi- 


204  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

merits  with  the  government  and  the  constitution  of  the 
country  hitherto  untried  and  of  fearful  and  appalling 
aspect.  This  message  calls  us  to  the  contemplation  of  a 
future  which  little  resembles  the  past.  Its  principles  are 
at  Avar  with  all  that  public  opinion  has  sustained  and  all 
which  the  experience  of  the  government  has  sanctioned. 
It  denies  first  principles ;  it  contradicts  truths  hitherto 
received  as  indisputable.  It  denies  to  the  judiciary  the 
interpretation  of  law  and  demands  to  divide  with  Congress 
the  origination  of  statutes.  It  extends  the  grasp  of  execu 
tive  pretension  over  every  power  of  the  government.  But 
this  is  not  all.  It  presents  the  chief  magistrate  of  the 
Union  in  the  attitude  of  arguing  away  the  powers  of  that 
government  over  which  he  had  been  chosen  to  preside, 
and  adopting  for  this  purpose  modes  of  reasoning  which 
even  under  the  influence  of  all  proper  feeling  towards  high 
official  station,  it  is  difficult  to  regard  as  respectable.  It 
appeals  to  every  prejudice  which  may  betray  men  into  a 
mistaken  view  of  their  own  interests,  and  to  every  passion 
which  may  lead  them  to  disobey  the  impulses  of  their 
understanding.  It  urges  all  the  specious  topics  of  State 
rights  and  national  encroachment  against  that  which  a 
great  majority  of  the  States  have  affirmed  to  be  rightful 
and  in  which  all  of  them  have  acquiesced.  It  sows,  in  an 
unsparing  manner,  the  seeds  of  jealousy  and  ill-will  against 
that  government  of  which  its  author  is  the  official  head. 
It  raises  a  cry  that  liberty  is  in  danger  at'  the  very  moment 
when  it  puts  forth  claims  to  powers  heretofore  unknown 
or  unheard  of.  It  affects  alarm  for  the  public  freedom  when 
nothing  endangers  that  freedom  so  much  as  its  own  unpar 
alleled  pretences.  This  even  is  not  all.  It  manifestly  seeks 
to  inflame  the  poor  against  the  rich,  it  wantonly  attacks 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  205 

whole  classes  of  the  people  for  the  purpose  of  turning 
against  them  the  prejudices  and  resentments  of  other 
classes.  It  is  a  State  paper  which  finds  no  topic  too  excit 
ing  for  its  use,  no  passion  too  inflammable  for  its  address 
and  its  solicitation.  Such  is  this  message.  It  remains 
now  for  the  people  of  the  United  States  to  choose  between 
the  principles  here  avowed  and  their  Government.  These 
cannot  subsist  together.  The  one  or  the  other  must  be 
rejected.  If  the  sentiments  of  the  message  shall  receive 
general  approbation  the  constitution  will  have  perished 
even  earlier  than  the  moment  which  its  enemies  origi 
nally  allowed  for  the  termination  of  its  existence.  It  will 
not  have  survived  to  its  fiftieth  year."  In  a  community  so 
full  of  political  life  and  of  self-preserving  power  as  the 
American  Republic  no  man  can  seriously  meditate  usurpa 
tion.  But  if  any  man  could  meditate  usurpation  he  would 
act  as  Jackson  acted;  he  would  stretch  his  power  under 
pretence  of  asserting  popular  right ;  he  would  give  himself 
out  as  the  embodiment  of  the  popular  will ;  he  would  de 
grade  constitutional  assemblies  and  the  judiciary  ;  he  would 
ostentatiously  appeal  from  their  judgment  to  that  of  the 
people  ;  he  would  corrupt  the  public  press ;  and  he  would 
stir  up  the  hatred  of  the  poor  against  the  rich. 

Andrew  Jackson,  however,  was  able  to  do  what  no  other 
President  has  done,  he  was  able  to  bequeath  the  succession. 
His  devisee  was  his  faithful  lieutenant  Martin  Van  Buren. 
Van  Buren  was  presiding  over  the  Senate  when  Clay 
thundered  out  an  awful  warning  to  the  usurping  execu 
tive  and  rhetorically  charged  Van  Buren  to  repeat  it  to 
Jackson.  Van  Buren  listened  with  an  air  of  simplicity,  1834. 
as  though  he  were  treasuring  up  every  word  for  repetition 
to  the  President,  and  when  Clay  had  finished,  left  the 


206  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

chair,  crossed  over  to  the  orator,  and  asked  him  for  a 
pinch  of  his  famous  snuff.  This  incident  depicts  the  man. 
Van  Buren  was  arch-engineer  of  the  political  machine  in 
his  own  State,  the  secret  of  which  he  had  brought  with 
him  to  Jackson's  councils.  He  was  a  man  of  great  tact 
and  address,  and  had  early  recognized  in  the  political  sky 
the  star  of  Andrew  Jackson.  Except  under  the  stress  of 
party  he  was  patriotic  as  well  as  sagacious,  nor  was 
he  a  bad  President.  But  on  his  head  fell  the  conse 
quences  of  his  master's  dealings  with  the  Bank  and 
the  deposits.  He  was  overwhelmed  by  the  financial  crisis 
of  1837,  when  commercial  ruin  and  repudiation  filled  the 
land ;  and  though  the  President  showed  no  want  of  cool 
ness  or  resource,  nothing  could  avert  the  effects  of  public 
calamity  on  the  reputation  of  the  government  and  the 
party  in  power. 

Party  lines  had  now  been  drawn  again.  On  one  side 
was  the  Democratic  party,  of  which  Jackson  had  been  the 
head  and  which  partook  of  the  character  of  its  chief.  On 
the  other  side  was  the  party  which  by  this  time  had 
assumed  the  name  of  Whig,  having  for  its  head  Clay, 
holding  with  him  for  protectionism,  expenditure  of  national 
money  on  internal  improvements,  a  broad  construction  of 
the  constitution  in  favour  of  the  central  government,  and 
a  national  bank,  at  the  same  time  maintaining  the  consti 
tutional  authority  of  Congress  and  the  judiciary  against 
stretches  of  the  executive  power  such  as  Jackson  had 
essayed.  The  Democrats  were  for  strict  construction, 
State  right,  and  economy.  The  spirit  of  the  old  Federal 
ists  had  migrated  into  the  Whig  party,  that  of  the  Jeffer- 
sonian  Republicans  into  its  rival.  The  Whigs,  like  the 
Federalists,  were  stronger  in  the  North  than  elsewhere. 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND   SLAVERY.  207 

they  had  the  men  of  intellect  and  the  most  substantial 
farmers  on  their  side,  while  the  Democrats  had  the 
populace  of  the  great  cities.  On  both  sides  the  poli 
ticians,  whose  religion  was  the  Union,  would  fain  have 
kept  the  question  of  slavery  out  of  sight,  but  though 
it  might  not  be  made  a  party  issue,  to  keep  it  out  of 
sight  was  impossible.  State  right,  the  old  Democratic 
doctrine,  served  a  new  purpose  as  the  bulwark  of  slav 
ery  against  the  nation,  and  "  dough  faces "  or  North 
ern  men  with  Southern  principles  became  eligible  as 
candidates. 

A  curious  current  had  for  a  time  been  running  across 
the  main  stream  of  party.  The  catastrophe  of  a  Free 
mason,  named  Morgan,  who  after  betraying  his  intention 
of  revealing  the  secrets  of  the  order  had  disappeared  and 
was  supposed  to  have  been  murdered,  produced  an  out 
break'  of  popular  fear  and  wrath  against  Freemasonry, 
which  spreading  over  a  great  part  of  the  Union,  gave  birth 
to  the  ephemeral  party  of  Anti-Masons.  This  irregular  1832. 
movement,  while  it  lasted,  rent  the  webs  and  perplexed 
the  souls  of  the  regular  politicians,  but  having  its  origin 
in  a  panic  it  could  not  last  long. 

Van  Buren's  term  at  an  end,  the  natural  candidate  of  1840. 
the  Whigs  for  President  was  Clay,  the  head,  the  author, 
and  the  pride  of  their  party.  But  Jackson's  success  had 
taught  the  wire-pullers  the  value  of  availability.  They 
cunningly  burked  Clay's  candidature,  while  they  looked 
around  for  an  available  man.  An  available  man  they 
found  and  a  counter-charm  in  all  respects  to  the  "  Old 
Hero "  and  "  Old  Hickory "  in  "  Old  Tippecanoe,"  the 
name  which  most  happily  for  electioneering  purposes  they 
gave  k)  William  Harrison,  a  worthy  old  country  gentle- 


208  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

man  in  Ohio,  who  in  a  combat  at  Tippecanoe  gained  a 
victory  over  the  Indians.  Harrison  was  presented  to  the 
people  as  equal  or  superior  to  Jackson  in  homeliness  and 
simplicity,  living  in  a  log  cabin  garnished  with  coon  skins 
and  drinking  hard  cider.  For  him  the  wire-pullers,  ir 
their  own  phrase,  "set  the  ball  rolling,"  and  gloriously 
it  rolled.  There  ensued  a  campaign  of  enthusiasm,  almost 
of  delirium.  Railroads,  now  extending  over  the  country, 
gave  facilities  for  large  gatherings.  The  whole  population 
was  excited  and  set  in  motion.  Men  laid  aside  thei :..* 
occupations.  Monster  meetings  were  held.  At  a  meeting 
in  Ohio  where  Harrison  appeared  it  was  said  that  a  hun 
dred  thousand  people  were  present.  Processions  fivo 
miles  long  chanted  "Tippecanoe  and  Tyler  too,"  Tyler 
being  the  candidate  for  the  Vice-Presidency.  The  ball 
which  had  been  set  rolling  and  the  emblems  of  Harrison's 
bucolic  virtue,  the  log  cabin  and  the  coon  skins,  wer-3 
everywhere  displayed.  Men  of  intellect  like  Webster 
stooped  to  exert  their  eloquence  in  a  coon  skin  campaign 
and  to  drink  the  health  of  the  Presidential  candidate  with 
forced  enthusiasm  in  hard  cider.  The  results  were  a 
complete  victory  of  the  Whigs  and  the  ascendancy  of 
availability  over  other  qualifications  and  claims  in  the 
choice  of  candidates  for  the  Presidency.  It  is  probable 
however  that  availability  would  in  any  case  have  ulti 
mately  prevailed.  What  the  Harrisonian  frenzy  denotes 
in  its  relation  to  American  character  it  is  not  easy  to 
say.  Had  the  American  people  traversed  in  half  a  century 
the  whole  distance  between  the  phlegmatic  Englishman 
and  the  wild  shouter  for  Tippecanoe,  or  was  this  strange 
outburst  of  political  poetry  a  recoil  from  a  too  prosaic 
life? 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  209 

"Tippecanoe  "  vacated  life  and  the  Presidency  a  month  1841. 
after  his  inauguration.  The  cause  of  his  death  seems  to 
have  been  the  buzzing  swarm  of  office  seekers  which  had 
followed  him  to  Washington  as  much  as  an  accidental 
malady.  Tyler  his  Vice-President  stepped  into  his  place. 
Tyler  had  been  put  on  the  ticket  to  propitiate  the  Southern 
wing.  By  his  conduct  as  President  he  read  his  party  a 
lesson  which  Americans  have  hardly  yet  laid  to  heart  on 
the  expediency  of  being  careful  in  the  selection  of  a  candi 
date  for  the  second  place,  and  not  using  that  nomination 
as  a  sop.  He  turned  against  his  party  ;  vetoed  their  pet 
measure,  the  erection  of  a  national  bank ;  and  tried  to  form 
a  party  of  his  own  with  a  view  to  re-election,  of  which 
however  he  had  no  chance.  His  excommunication  by  the 
party  could  not  deprive  him  of  his  veto  power.  It  only 
illustrated  the  difference  between  British  and  American 
forms'  of  government.  Had  Tyler  been  a  British  Prime 
Minister  deserted  by  his  party  he  must  have  at  once  fallen. 
A  more  serious  question  than  that  of  the  Bank  soon  loomed 
up.  Houston,  an  American  filibuster  and  an  old  comrade 
of  Jackson,  with  a  body  of  intrusive  Americans  had  planted 
himself  in  Texas,  which  belonged  to  the  Republic  of 
Mexico,  and  when  the  Mexicans  took  arms  to  put  him 
down  and  recover  their  province,  had  defeated  them  at  the 
battle  of  San  Jacinto.  He  now,  probably  in  pursuance  of  1841. 
a  scheme  preconcerted  with  Jackson,  threw  himself  into 
the  arms  of  the  American  Republic,  which  could  not 
receive  him  without  going  to  war  with  Mexico,  whose 
accession  to  the  sisterhood  of  freedom  had  recently  been 
the  subject  of  jubilation.  The  South  was  for  the  annexa 
tion,  which  opened  a  vast  vista  of  extension  for  slavery 
ever  hungering  not  only  for  new  political  domains  but  for 


210  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP 

fresh  fields  to  till,  since  slave  culture,  especially  the  culture ; 
of  tobacco,  was  exhausting  to  the  soil.  The  Northern  spirh 
was  opposed  to  annexation  for  the  same  reasons.  Tyler 
entered  with  alacrity  into  the  intrigue ;  he  was  ready  for 
che  annexation  of  Texas  or  for  anything  which  could  gain 
him  re-election.  When  the  time  came  he  was  contemptu 
ously  swept  aside,  but  he  had  opened  the  question  on 
which  the  election  turned  and  which  proved  fatal  to  the 
chief  of  his  enemies. 

1844.  Annexation  of  Texas  with  slavery  behind  it  was  the  de 
cisive  issue  in  the  next  Presidential  campaign  between  tho 
Whigs  whose  candidate  was  the  brilliant  Clay  and  the 
Democrats  whose  candidate  was  the  far  from  brilliant  bu: 
highly  available  J.  K.  Polk.  Van  Buren,  to  his  credit, 
had  been  laid  aside  on  account  of  his  unwillingness  to 
embrace  annexation.  Each  party  had  still  a  southern  as 
well  as  a  northern  wing,  but  the  strength  of  the  Whigs 
lay  in  the  north,  that  of  the  Democrats  in  the  south,  and 
their  respective  affinities  to  freedom  and  slavery  were  seen 
through  the  veil  which  the  politicians  laboured  to  keep 
spread.  The  Democrats  taxed  the  Whigs  with  anti-slavery 
leanings,  and  the  Whigs  could  not  retort  the  reproach. 
Clay,  striving  to  balance  himself  between  annexation  and 
opposition  to  annexation,  that  he  might  hold  his  souther]  i 
without  losing  his  northern  wing,  fell  as  the  political 
acrobat  is  apt  to  fall.  His  great  achievements  as  a  states 
man  were  compromises.  But  as  a  candidate  he  found  a 
compromise  between  opposite  policies  too  much  for  his 
address.  A  letter  in  which  dallying  with  annexation  IK; 
used  an  expression  plainer  than  he  intended,  set  him 
fatally  at  odds  with  a  third  party  which  would  listen  to 
no  compromise,  and  which  though  small  was  large  enough 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  211 

to  turn  the  scale.  This  was  the  Anti-slavery  party,  or  the 
Liberty  party,  as  the  political  section  of  the  abolitionists 
styled  itself,  now  coming  as  an  organized  force  upon  the 
scene.  Naturally  these  men  would  have  preferred  Clay, 
who  was  half  with  them,  to  Polk,  who  was  entirely  against 
them;  but  exasperated  at  Clay's  trimming  letter,  which 
seemed  to  them  a  wound  received  in  the  house  of  a  friend, 
they  left  his  side  and  threw  away  their  votes  on  Birney  a 
candidate  of  their  own.  Clay  thus  lost  New  York  and 
the  election.  Loud  were  the  lamentations  which  arose 
from  all  his  followers.  Even  the  victors  were  almost 
ashamed  of  their  victory.  The  wail  has  been  prolonged 
in  history.  Unquestionably  the  election  of  Polk  against 
Clay  was  the  preference  of  mediocrity  to  distinction.  But 
such  is  the  law  of  democracies,  and  after  all  Clay  was  a 
dazzling  and  fascinating  but  artful  politician  who  owed  his 
fall  to  a  false  step  in  the  practice  of  his  own  art.  Nor  was 
his  fate  unretributive.  As  the  chief  of  the  war-hawks 
he  had  called  forth  that  military  spirit  which,  embodied  in 
Jackson,  crossed  and  ruined  his  own  career. 

Polk  as  President  did  that  which  he  had  been  elected  to  1845. 
do.  He  pushed  the  quarrel  with  Mexico,  which  formed  as 
striking  an  illustration  as  history  can  furnish  of  the  quarrel 
between  the  wolf  and  the  lamb,  and  which  no  American 
historian  of  character  mentions  without  pain.  To  add  the 
disgrace  of  private  covetousness  to  that  of  public  rapine  it 
seems  that  some  of  the  chief  promoters  of  the  aggression 
were  speculators  in  Texan  securities.  The  use  of  the 
phrase  re-annexation  instead  of  annexation,  having  no 
warrant  in  fact,  did  not  cover  the  wrong.  Mexico  was  at 
last  pressed  and  goaded  into  doing  what  by  a  hypocritical 
fiction  was  pronounced  an  act  of  war,  and  was  invaded  by 


212  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

an  American  army.  The  Mexicans,  poorly  armed  and  ill 
commanded  as  well  as  people  of  a  weaker  race,  notwith 
standing  their  numbers  were  as  sheep  to  the  butcher. 
They  were  defeated  by  Generals  Taylor  and  Scott  in  a 
series  of  engagements,  and  the  invader  marched  into  theii 
capital.  That  they  fought  as  well  as  they  could  against 
over-mastering  wrong  must  always  be  recorded  to  their 
honour.  It  forms  a  bright  spot  in  the  dark  and  sordid 

1845.  pages  of  their  history.  The  immense  expanse  of  Texas 
was  ceded  to  the  conqueror,  annexed  to  the  United  States 
and  re-annexed  to  slavery,  which  had  been  abolished  under 
the  Mexican  constitution.  Nor  did  annexation  end  there, 

1850.  but  was  extended  to  New  Mexico  and  Arizona.  At  the 
same  time  the  golden  California  was  seized  against  the  will 
of  its  few  inhabitants  on  the  pretext,  for  which  there  was 
not  the  slightest  foundation,  that  Great  Britain  had  design* 
upon  it.  All  this  was  done,  be  it  remembered,  by  the  slavo 
power  then  dominant  and  its  political  retainers.  Northern 
morality  protested,  as  the  readers  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers  " 
know. 

1849.  The  next  President  could  be  no  other  than  Taylor,  the 
victorious  general  of  the  war,  although  Taylor  neither  was 
nor  pretended  to  be  anything  of  a  statesman.  A  tolerably 
shrewd  candidate  he  was,  and  in  this  respect  Clay  might 
have  envied  his  tact.  During  the  canvass  he  received  a 
letter  from  a  planter  running  thus:  — "  Sir,  I  have  worked 
hard  and  been  frugal  all  my  life,  and  the  results  of  my  in 
dustry  have  mainly  taken  the  form  of  slaves,  of  whom  I  own 
about  a  hundred.  Before  I  vote  for  President  I  want  to 
see  that  the  candidate  I  support  will  not  so  act  as  to  divest 
me  of  my  property."  The  general  replied :  "  Sir,  I  have  the 
honour  to  inform  you  that  I  too  have  been  all  my  life  in- 


IY.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  213 

dustrious  and  frugal,  and  that  the  fruits  thereof  are  mainly 
in  slaves,  of  whom  I  own  three  hundred."  Taylor  turned 
out  a  plain,  honest  man,  not  a  bigot  or  henchman  of 
slavery,  in  spite  of  his  three  hundred  slaves,  and  showed 
no  tendency  to  play  Jackson.  He  died  in  the  White  House 
and  his  place  was  taken  by  Vice-President  Fillmore,  who  i860 
left  no  mark.  The  election  that  followed  was  the  last 
chance  of  Daniel  Webster's  ambition,  and  his  desperate 
attempt  to  grasp  it  was  a  sad  example  of  the  influence 
of  that  dazzling  prize  upon  the  characters  of  public  men. 
He  who  had  been  the  stately  champion  of  freedom,  of 
liberty  of  opinion,  and  of  right,  now,  to  attract  south 
ern  votes,  stood  forth  as  the  defender  of  slavery,  of  the 
fugitive  slave  law,  and  the  gag.  He  derided  the  anti-slavery 
doctrine  as  a  ghostly  abstraction,  and  descended  almost  to 
buffoonery  in  ridiculing  the  idea  of  a  law  higher  than  that 
which  ordained  the  hunting  down  of  fugitive  bondsmen. 
His  character,  to  which  friends  of  freedom  in  the  North  had 
long  looked  up,  fell  with  a  crash  like  that  of  a  mighty  tree, 
of  a  lofty  pillar,  of  a  rock  that  for  ages  had  breasted  the 
waves.  Some  minds  willing  to  be  misled  he  still  drew 
after  him,  but  the  best  of  his  friends  turned  from  him 
and  his  life  ended  in  gloom. 

Mexico  was  avenged  on  her  spoiler,  for  the  acquisition  of 
Texas  re-opened  the  fatal  controversy  between  slavery  and 
freedom  which  the  Missouri  compromise  had  put  to  sleep  in 
Congress  for  thirty  years.  Texas  being  large  enough  to 
make  four  States,  the  North  was  threatened  with  a  formid 
able  extension  of  the  slave  power.  A  proviso  was  moved 
by  Wilmot  excluding  slavery  from  Texas.  Thereupon  a 
desperate  struggle  began  in  Congress.  Webster  and  Clay, 
the  statesmen  and  the  hierophants  of  Union,  appeared  with 


214  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

a  parting  splendour  on  the  scene  of  their  achievements, 
and  Calhoun,  a  dying  man,  sat  in  the  Senate  while  a  col 
league  read  his  last  speech.  Passion  was  so  fiercely  excited 
that  a  revolver  was  drawn  in  the  hall  of  the  serene  Senate. 
Not  Texas  only  but  New  Mexico  and  Arizona  which  went 
with  Texas,  and  California  into  which  there  had  been  a  rush 
of  gold-seekers  and  which  urgently  demanded  political 
organization,  seemed  to  be  breaking  out,  when  Clay  once 
more  came  forward  as  an  angel  of  mediation  with  a  com 
promise  in  his  hand.  Texas  was  consigned  to  slavery  bui 
was  left  a  single  State.  New  Mexico  and  Arizona  were  alsc 
consigned  to  slavery  against  which  however  they  were 
practically  guarded  by  nature,  being  unsuited  for  slave 
labour.  California  was  admitted  as  a  free  State.  At  the 
same  time  a  fugitive  slave  law  of  a  more  stringent  kind  wat 
passed,  a  concession  vital  and  fatal  to  the  South.  How 
conscience  in  passing  this  law  struggled  with  policy  was 
seen  when  thirty-three  Northern  members  paired,  stayed 
away,  or  dodged  the  vote.  This  was  the  third  anel  the 
last  compromise. 

The  Whig  party  which  had  striven  to  keep  the  slavery 
question  out  of  the  political  arena  and  to  build  its  platform 
of  such  planks  as  a  protective  tariff,  a  national  bank, 
internal  improvements,  the  cultivation  of  national  spirit, 
and  devotion  to  the  Union,  combined  with  the  opposition  to 
Jacksonian  violence  and  encroachment,  lost  the  foundation 
of  its  existence  ;  in  fact  it  was  buried  in  the  grave  of  Clay, 
to  whom  in  a  great  measure  it  owed  its  life.  It  faded  away 
like  a  dissolving  view,  while  in  its  place  appeared  the  linea 
ments,  first  of  a  Free  Soil,  then  of  a  National  Republican,  or 
in  brief,  a  Republican  party  formed  on  the  grand  issue  and 
destined  to  try  with  slavery,  first  at  the  ballot  and  after- 


IT.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  215 

wards  on  the  battlefield,  the  inevitable  question  whether  the 
country  was  to  be  wholly  slave  or  wholly  free. 

Slavery  was  confident  and  aggressive.  After  Polk  it  1853. 
made  Pierce,  another  of  its  satellites,  President.  Under 
Pierce  it  planned  the  annexation  of  Cuba  to  which  it  feared 
emancipation,  now  triumphant  in  Great  Britain  and  Europe, 
might  be  extended.  Three  American  ambassadors  to  1854. 
European  Courts,  Buchanan,  Mason,  and  Soul (3,  met  at 
Ostend  and  put  forth  a  manifesto  the  effrontery  of  which 
startled  Europe,  intimating  that  Spain  must  be  compelled 
to  sell  or  give  up  Cuba  to  the  United  States.  Lopez,  a 
filibuster,  made  an  attempt,  with  the  sympathy  of  the  South, 
to  seize  the  island,  but  perished  with  his  band.  Walker, 
another  filibuster,  also  with  the  sympathy  of  the  South, 
invaded  Nicaragua,  made  himself  dictator,  and  was  pre 
paring  to  introduce  negro  slavery,  when  he  also  met  his 
doom.  A  revival  even  of  the  African  slave  trade  was  in 
the  air ;  a  contraband  trade  in  African  negroes  went  on 
upon  a  large  scale  with  the  connivance  even  of  the  Federal 
authorities  at  the  South.  As  Great  Britain  was  now  lead 
ing  a  crusade  against  slavery  she  became  the  object  of  diplo 
matic  enmity  to  the  slave-owners  who  were  in  power  at 
Washington  and  whose  discourtesies,  set  down  to  the  ac 
count  of  the  whole  American  nation,  had  a  bad  effect  upon 
British  opinion  at  a  later  day. 

The  last  act  of  the  struggle  between  the  Jacksonian 
Democrats  and  the  Whigs  was  complicated  by  the  com 
mencement  of  another  sudden  tornado  of  opinion  sweeping 
like  the  Anti-Masonism,  from  an  independent  quarter  across 
the  field  of  the  regular  parties,  and  for  the  moment  con 
fusing  their  lines.  This  was  the  movement  of  the  American 
party,  or  as  it  was  nicknamed,  the  party  of  the  Knowno- 


216  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

things.  That  they  "knew  of  nothing  illegal  or  disloyal " 
being  the  regular  answer  with  which  they  parried  curious 
1854.  inquiry.  The  American  party  was  called  into  transitory  ex 
istence  by  dislike  and  dread  of  the  foreign  element,  now  in 
creasing  in  volume  and  influence,  and  especially  of  the  Irish 
Roman  Catholics.  The  Irish  Roman  Catholics,  always  to 
be  distinguished  from  the  Scotch-Irish  of  the  Protestant 
North,  were  now  pouring  from  their  famine-stricken  country 
into  the  United  States  and  were  fast  becoming  that  dread 
power,  the  Irish  vote,  henceforth  a  serious  factor  in  Ameri 
can  politics,  though  perhaps  from  a  nervous  sense  of  the 
present  situation  even  historians  seem  to  shrink  from  the 
mention  of  its  name.  These  people  of  a  hapless  land  and  a 
sad  history,  ignorant,  superstitious,  priest-ridden,  nurtured 
in  squalid  poverty,  untrained  in  constitutional  government, 
trained  only  in  conspiracy  and  insurrection,  were  a  useful 
addition  to  the  labour  of  their  adopted  country ;  of  its  poli 
tics  they  could  only  be  the  bane.  Clannish  still  in  their 
instincts,  herding  clannishly  together  in  the  great  cities  and 
blindly  following  leaders  whom  they  accepted  as  chiefs,  and 
in  choosing  whom  they  were  led  more  by  blatant  energy  than 
by  merit,  they  were  soon  trained  to  the  pursuit  of  political 
spoils  and  filled  elections  with  turbulence,  fraud,  and  corrup 
tion.  Through  the  connivance  of  a  judiciary  elected  largely 
by  their  own  votes  they  were  permitted  to  set  the  naturaliza 
tion  law  at  defiance,  and  fresh  from  the  seat  of  their  native 
wretchedness  to  assume  and  misuse  the  powers  of  American 
citizens.  Their  numbers  and  cohesion  soon  enabled  them  to 
influence  the  balance  of  parties.  But  as  a  body  they  went 
into  the  Democratic  party  and  there  remained,  attracted  at 
first  perhaps  by  its  name  and  confirmed  in  their  adherence  to 
it  as  the  party  of  slavery,  which  it  ultimately  became,  by  their 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  217 

bitter  antipathy  to  the  negro,  who  might  compete  with  them 
in  the  labour  market  and  whose  degradation  alone  saved 
them  from  being  at  the  bottom  of  the  social  scale.  Their 
influence  could  not  fail  thenceforth  to  intensify  the  Anti- 
British  sentiment  in  American  politics,  and  to  envenom  all 
disputes  between  America  and  the  mother  country.  Know- 
nothingism  presently  passed  away,  its  object  being  lost  in 
the  more  pressing  issue.  But  the  cause  of  it  did  not  pass 
away. 

Meantime  in  ways  more  important  than  politics,  and  in 
spite  of  political  factions,  the  country  had  been  advancing 
with  mighty  strides.  Since  the  Union  the  number  of  the 
States  had  more  than  doubled.  Population  had  rapidly 
multiplied  and  had  been  swollen  by  a  great  immigration, 
not  Irish  only  but  German  and  Scandinavian  which  sought 
happier  homes  and  brighter  prospects  than  those  of  the 
peasantry  in  the  old  countries  of  Europe.  At  the  time  of 
the  Union  settlements  still  clung  to  the  Atlantic  seaboard. 
It  had  now  passed  the  Alleghanies  in  force,  entered  the 
valley  of  the  Mississippi,  and  was  turning  what  had  once 
been  merely  a  mental  horizon  and  afterwards  a  boundary- 
line  into  a  central  waterway.  At  last  to  the  Atlantic  the 
Pacific  coast,  with  its  sunny  shores  and  half  tropical  wealth, 
had  been  added.  Humanity  had  staked  out  the  vast  field  on 
which  the  great  experiment  of  democracy  was  to  be  tried. 
Intercommunication  had  been  vastly  improved  by  enter 
prise  and  invention.  The  great  Cumberland  Road  had 
opened  a  broad  highway  for  civilization  from  Maryland 
across  the  Alleghanies.  Clinton  had  turned  from  the  fac 
tions  and  corrupt  politics  of  New  York  to  the  construction 
of  the  Erie  Canal,  which  in  its  magnitude  rivals  and  by 
its  utility  shames  the  works  of  the  Pharaohs.  Steam  had 


218  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP 

begun  to  open  a  new  era.  Steamboats  plied  on  the  water 
ways  and  the  railway  took  the  place  of  the  crawling  stage 
A  railway  from  the  Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  was  already 
planned.  Thus  not  only  were  the  States  of  the  Unioi 
bound  together  and  one  mind  diffused  through  the  wholt 
frame,  but  the  appliances  of  agriculture  and  civiliza 
tion  were  brought,  with  the  march  of  settlement,  into  the 
virgin  wilderness.  The  mineral  resources  of  the  country 
were  being  opened.  Spinning-jennies  and  power-looms,  the 
inventions  of  Hargreaves  and  Arkwright,  were  imported. 
Manufactures  on  a  large  scale  had  grown  up  in  the  North 
eastern  States  and  had  superseded  the  spinning-wheel. 
Civilization  moving  westward  had  a  ragged  edge  of  roving; 
and  lawless  adventure,  at  least  where  it  moved  from  the, 
quarter  of  slavery.  With  the  commercial  expansion  attend 
ant  on  the  rapid  development  of  new  resources  inevitably 
went  gambling  speculation  with  its  wild-cat  banks,  frauds, 
bankruptcy,  and  crashes,  the  effect  however  of  which  was 
limited  and  transient,  commerce  like  industry  rising  elastic 
from  its  fall  and  wealth  with  all  its  accompaniments,  moral 
and  social  as  well  as  material,  advancing  by  leaps  and  bounds. 
Nor  had  the  distribution  of  wealth  yet  ceased  to  be  equal,  at 
all  events  in  comparison  with  its  distribution  in  the  old  world. 
The  last  church  establishment,  that  of  Connecticut,  had 
fallen,  and  religious  equality  everywhere  reigned.  The 
people  were  still  religious ;  Christianity  generally,  and  in 
all  cases  theism,  remained  the  basis  and  sanction  of  their 
morality.  But  orthodoxy  was  giving  way  and  philosophy 
was  gaining  ground.  Emerson  had  come  out  of  the  church 
and  was  teaching  morality  without  a  creed.  Religion  with 
out  a  creed  found  an  eloquent  preacher  in  Theodore  Parker. 
In  the  ferment  of  progress  Utopian  schemes  of  society  be- 


iv.  DEMOCRACY  AND    SLAVERY.  219 

gan  to  abound.  Some  of  the  social  Utopias,  as  that  of  the 
Shakers  and  that  of  the  Perfectionists,  took  a  religious 
form,  and  Revivalism  made  its  wild  protest  in  favour  of 
the  spiritual  interests  of  man. 

Intelligence  was  mainly  engrossed  by  the  pursuit  of 
wealth,  practical  science  and  invention  were  active,  while  of 
literature  there  was  as  yet  but  little,  and  that  little  was  not 
native  in  character  but  European.  Denial  of  copyright  to 
English  writers,  by  causing  their  works  to  be  pirated  and 
sold  in  cheap  editions,  discouraged  American  authorship 
and  thus  kept  American  intellect  in  thraldom  to  Europe. 
An  international  copyright  law  would  have  done  more  to 
emancipate  from  British  influence  than  any  war  with  Great 
Britain. 

Oratory,  both  political  and  forensic,  on  the  other  hand 
had  been  carried  to  a  high  point,  and  if  in  the  hot  and  ex 
citable  youth  of  the  nation  it  was  often  bombastic,  some 
times,  as  in  Webster  and  Choate,  it  was  not.  The  national 
debates  on  slavery  and  other  momentous  questions  stimu 
lated  eloquence  among  the  leaders  and  habits  of  poli 
tical  thought  among  the  people.  The  political  press  drew 
to  it  a  large  share  of  ability  and  had  become  a  great 
power ;  with  power,  irresponsible  so  long  as  the  circulation 
can  be  sustained,  came  the  inherent  danger  of  abuse. 

Political  democracy  was  now  full  grown  in  the  Northern 
States  and  at  Washington,  so  far  as  the  Northern  spirit  pre 
vailed  there  ;  all  officers  were  elective,  all  office-holders  were 
in  the  fullest  sense  servants  of  the  people,  every  man's 
tenure  was  precarious  and  dependent  on  popular  favour, 
rotation  in  office  was  the  rule.  Even  the  judiciary  had 
become  elective  in  most  of  the  States.  To  the  people  and 
its  will  everybody  had  bowed,  as  once  everybody  had  bowed 


220  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP.  iy. 

to  royalty  and  to  the  will  of  kings.  Property  qualification 
for  the  franchise  had  generally  disappeared.  Manhood  suf 
frage  was  the  rule.  With  the  good  of  the  system  came  its 
inevitable  evil,  the  machinery  of  party  and  electioneering, 
demagogic  arts  and  strategy,  factions,  passion,  and  vitu 
peration,  the  reign  of  the  caucus  and  the  boss,  and  where  the 
foreign  element,  especially  the  Irish,  prevailed,  ballot-stuff 
ing,  repeating,  rioting,  and  corruption.  Only  in  the  slave- 
owning  South  oligarchy  still  held  power.  Social  democracy 
also  was  in  outward  forms  and  manners  complete  ;  in  sub 
stance  it  was  much  more  advanced  than  it  was  in  the  old 
world,  though  nothing  could  efface  the  social  lines  drawn  by 
wealth  and  personal  superiority.  Labour  and  lowly  birth 
instead  of  being  a  disparagement  were  a  boast  and  a  title 
to  political  preferment.  A  nation  which  had  been  at  school 
and  which  read  paid  a  homage  to  intellect  perhaps  greatei 
than  that  which  it  paid  to  commercial  success. 


CHAPTER   V. 

RUPTURE  AND   RECONSTRUCTION. 

question  of  slavery,  in  spite  of  all  the  attempts-  to 
elbow  it  out  of  politics  and  prevent  it  from  breaking 
the  beloved  Union,  had  now  forced  itself  to  the  front,  and 
the  "irrepressible  conflict "  was  at  hand. 

Slavery  is  dead,  and  the  Southerners  would  not  revive  it 
if  they  could.  They  have  wisely  accepted  its  abolition,  as 
they  have  magnanimously  accepted  defeat  by  the  greater 
power.  Denouncing  it  now  seems  like  trampling  on  a 
grave.  It  was  the  offspring  of  soil  and  climate  rather 
than  of  character,  though  morally  it  was  more  alien  to 
republican  and  Puritan  New  England  than  to  Anglican 
and  monarchical  Virginia,  while  by  the  Quaker  of  Phila 
delphia  it  was  always  condemned.  But  its  extinction  was 
entirely  to  be  desired.  Ancient  slavery  may  have  been  a 
step  forward  in  evolution.  In  the  age  of  tribal  wars  it 
was  an  improvement  on  extermination.  It  ended  in 
emancipation,  and  ultimately  in  the  fusion  of  the  races. 
But  American  slavery  was  not  a  step  forward  in  evo 
lution  ;  it  was  a  long  step  backwards ;  it  was  a  winter 
fallen  into  the  lap  of  spring.  Its  sole  source  was  the 
desire  of  Europeans  in  a  languid  climate  to  have  the 
work  done  for  them  instead  of  doing  it  themselves. 
Fusion  in  the  case  of  negro  slavery  was  fatally  precluded 

221 


222  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

by  colour.  There  could  be  no  intermingling  except  that 
which  arose  from  the  abuse  of  the  negro  woman  by  her 
white  master.  Emancipation  was  greatly  discouraged. 
The  emancipated  slave  was  a  suspected  pariah.  He  was 
trampled  on  more  than  a  slave,  because  in  him  the  race  of 
the  bondsman  seemed  to  pretend  to  equality.  To  talk 
of  the  system  as  gradually  elevating  the  negro  was  idle 
when  permanent  marriage  and  domestic  ties,  the  first 
elements  of  moral  civilization,  were  denied  him,  when  it 
was  penal  to  teach  him  to  read  and  write,  when  the 
chance  of  raising  himself  above  the  coarsest  manual  labour, 
even  by  petty  trades,  was  withheld.  Not  less  idle  was 
the  pretence  of  making  him  a  Christian,  which  the  South 
ern  clergy,  religious  henchmen  of  the  system,  were  fain 
to  put  forward.  How  make  a  man  a  Christian  without 
the  domestic  morality  and  affections  essential  to  the  for 
mation  of  a  Christian  character,  and  when  Christianity  in 
his  master  was  always  presenting  itself  to  him  as  a  religion 
of  wrong?  Calhoun  brought  himself  to  believe  that  the 
Southern  family  was  superior  to  the  Northern  family  as 
having  a  third  relation,  that  of  master  and  slave,  in  addi 
tion  to  those  of  husband  and  wife,  parent  and  child.  But 
what  became  of  the  family  of  the  negro?  Household 
slavery,  no  doubt,  was  often,  perhaps  generally,  mild ;  but 
the  cruelty  of  plantation  slavery,  at  least  on  the  large 
plantations,  is  too  well  proved.  The  negro  there  was 
abandoned  to  the  driver,  a  man  of  a  low  and  generally 
disreputable  class,  whose  sole  object  was  to  raise  the 
largest  crop  of  cotton,  and  who  used  up  the  slave  like 
a  beast  of  burden.  Not  only  was  the  plantation  slave 
overworked  and  tortured  with  the  lash,  he  was  sometimes 
murdered,  and  with  impunity,  as  negro  evidence  was  not 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  223 

admitted  against  whites.  If  the  slave  was  happy,  why 
those  fetters,  those  bloodhounds,  that  hideous  slave  code? 
If  he  was  contented,  why  those  laws  forbidding  him  to 
hold  meetings,  to  move  freely  about,  rendering  him  liable 
to  summary  arrest  and  to  scourging  if  he  was  found  wan 
dering  without  a  master  ?  Why  was  Southern  legislation 
a  code  of  terror?  The  Southerners  and  their  wives  lived 
in  constant  dread  of  slave  insurrection.  They  took  every 
alarm  as  an  announcement  of  it.  At  Charleston,  though 
summer  evenings  were  sweet,  the  city  was  shut  up  early 
and  handed  over  to  the  patrol.  This  is  the  answer  to 
Calhoun's  boast  that  slavery  excluded  angry  and  dan 
gerous  questions  between  the  employer  and  the  employed. 
Most  revolting,  if  not  most  cruel  of  all,  were  the  auction, 
at  which  husband  and  wife,  parent  and  child,  were  sold 
apart,  the  sight  of  droves  of  human  cattle  on  their  way  to  it, 
and  the  advertisements  of  human  flesh,  especially  of  girls 
nearly  white.  Negro  quarters  on  a  plantation  were 
hovels ;  the  negro's  clothes  were  rags ;  his  food  was 
coarse ;  his  life  was  foul.  That  he  was  happier  than  he 
would  have  been  in  his  African  hamlet  was  more  easily 
asserted  than  proved.  His  happiness  at  best  was  that  of 
swine.  In  his  African  hamlet,  too,  he  had  the  chance,  if 
he  had  any  capacity,  of  one  day  rising  in  the  scale  of  civili 
zation.  Against  the  negro  in  America  the  gate  of  the 
future  was  inexorably  barred.  The  general  effect  upon 
the  character  of  the  slave-owner  could  not  be  doubtful. 
Brave,  frank,  hospitable,  free-handed,  courteous  to  his 
equals,  a  first-rate  rider  and  sportsman  he  might  be ;  his 
wife  might  be  soft,  elegant,  and  charming,  though  there 
was  an  element  in  her  character  of  a  different  kind,  which 
civil  war  disclosed:  but  it  is  not  in  the  exercise  of 


224  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

domestic  despotism,  with  passion  and  language  unre 
strained,  amidst  whips,  manacles,  and  blood  hounds,  that 
the  character  of  a  true  gentleman  can  be  formed.  The 
temper  of  the  boys  was  spoiled  and  their  minds  were 
tainted  by  familiarity  with  slaves.  With  slavery  always 
goes  lust.  The  number  of  half-breeds  was  large.  White 
fathers  might  even  sell  their  half-breed  children  as  slaves, 
and  a  Southern  lady  was  heard  to  complain  that  she  was 
but  the  head  of  a  harem.  If,  as  some  desperate  advocates 
of  slavery  contended,  the  negro  was  not  a  man,  what  were 
all  those  half-breeds  to  be  called?  The  great  planters 
were  prodigal,  many  of  them  were  in  debt,  and  in  theii 
mansions  luxury  and  ostentation,  rather  than  comfort, 
reigned.  The  table  was  profusely  spread;  there  was  a 
number  of  servants  in  livery,  but  broken  windows  re 
mained  unmended,  and  doors  would  not  shut.  The  num 
ber,  however,  of  the  owners  of  many  slaves  was  small,  that 
of  the  owners  of  any  slaves  not  very  large,  compared 
with  that  of  the  "  mean  whites,"  who,  disdaining  industry 
as  the  lot  of  the  slave,  and  full  of  insensate  pride  of  colour, 
though  the  very  negroes  despised  them,  lived  a  half  vaga 
bond  life  as  parasites  of  the  slave  system,  farming  but 
little  and  very  poorly,  slave-driving,  slave-hunting,  loung 
ing  and  drinking,  sponging  on  the  great  planters,  whose 
dependents,  socially  and  politically,  they  were.  Nothing 
is  better  attested  than  the  inferiority  of  Southern  to  North 
ern  life  in  comfort,  thrift,  cleanliness,  and  all  the  elements 
of  civilization.  Slavery  at  Athens  and  Rome  had  supported 
an  intellectual  community.  In  the  slave  States  of  America 
there  was  no  literature  or  science.  Culture  was  confined 
to  a  few  of  the  richest  men.  There  was  not  mechan 
ical  invention.  The  inventor  of  the  cotton-gin  himself  was 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  225 

a  native  of  Massachusetts.  Poor  were  the  universities, 
and  the  schools  were  poorer  still.  Young  Southern  gentle 
men  were  sent  to  the  universities  of  the  North.  Some 
jurists  were  produced  by  the  practical  need  of  law.  The 
clergy  were  not  only  inferior  in  education  but  degraded 
by  the  necessity  of  cringing  to  slavery,  and  of  perverting 
Scripture  and  paltering  with  conscience  in  that  interest. 
What  sort  of  pastor  was  that  Methodist  clergyman  of 
Tennessee,  who,  when  a  negro  had  been  burned  alive, 
defended  the  act  in  print  as  one  of  necessary  self-defence, 
avowed  that  he  should  have  been  glad  to  take  part,  and 
expressed  his  wish  that,  instead  of  being  merely  burned, 
the  victim  had  been  torn  with  red-hot  pincers  and  his 
limbs  cut  off  one  by  one  ?  Politics  were  an  oligarchy  of 
planters,  the  single  aim  of  whose  statesmanship  was  exten 
sion  and  perpetuation  of  slavery.  Nor  was  the  economical 
aspect'  of  the  system  better  than  the  rest.  Slave  labour  was 
unwilling,  stupid,  and  sluggish  ;  it  lacked  intelligence  for 
variety  of  production  and  unvaried  crops  exhausted  the  soil. 
In  Virginia,  old  tobacco  fields  were  covered  by  forests 
of  pine.  Larger  crops  of  cotton  have  been  raised  by  free 
labour  under  all  the  disadvantages  of  recent  emancipation. 
The  slave,  having  no  interest  in  thrift,  was  wasteful. 
The  ownership  of  infancy  and  decrepitude  was  unprofit 
able.  High  industries,  being  socially  and  politically  an 
tagonistic,  as  well  as  economically  alien  to  the  system, 
could  flourish  only  in  a  few  of  the  larger  cities.  On  the  eve 
of  Secession,  Mr.  Olmsted,  a  very  fair-minded  inquirer,  made 
a  tour  of  observation  through  the  South.  His  "Cotton 
Kingdom"  depicts  general  barbarism  thinly  veiled  and 
barely  relieved  by  a  few  seats  of  commerce  or  mansions  of 
private  wealth.  In  the  house  of  civilization  are  many  man- 


22(5  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

sions,  and  very  peculiar  institutions  may  serve  humanity 
in  their  way,  but  in  no  way  could  humanity  be  served  by 
American  slavery.  On  the  other  hand,  American  slavery 
threatened  humanity  with  aggression.  Hunger  of  land 
as  well  as  craving  for  political  power  and  the  needed  bar 
riers  against  the  advance  of  emancipation  drove  it  on. 
It  had  shown  its  tendencies  in  buccaneering  attacks  on 
South  American  republics  and  on  Cuba,  as  well  as  in  the 
conquest  of  Texas.  It  had  its  eye  on  the  West  Indies 
and  Hayti.  It  was  looking  to  the  reopening  of  the  slave 
trade,  which  would  have  brought  it  into  collision  with 
Great  Britain  as  an  emancipating  power.  In  the  absence 
of  the  slave  trade,  the  demand  for  more  negroes,  bred  by 
the  increasing  value  of  cotton,  was  met  by  the  conver 
sion  of  Virginia,  which  had  exhausted  much  of  its 
own  land,  into  a  breeding  State,  a  shameful  end  foi 
the  mother  of  Presidents  and  the  Old  Dominion.  The 
plea  put  into  the  mouth  of  a  good  slave  owner  no  doubt 
has  force ;  he  might  feel  that  he  was  doing  his  duty  to 
his  slaves ;  he  might  complacently  contrast  his  peaceful 
household  with  the  labour  wars  of  the  North,  his  gentle 
wife  and  daughters  with  its  female  agitators,  his  politi 
cal  calm  with  its  democratic  turmoil.  But  for  the  system, 
the  only  valid  apology  was  the  supreme  difficulty  of  say 
ing  in  what  relation  other  than  slavery  the  two  races 
brought  together  under  an  evil  star,  and,  as  it  seemed, 
radically  unequal  in  capacity,  could  be  placed  towards 
each  other.  That  problem  has  hardly  yet  been  solved. 

Could  that  knot  have  been  untied  instead  of  being  cut 
by  the  sword  of  civil  war?  Only,  it  would  seem,  by 
peaceful  separation.  Compensated  emancipation,  like  that 
which  freed  the  slaves  in  the  West  Indies,  would  have 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  227 

cost  but  a  fraction  of  the  price  which  in  the  end  was  paid. 
But  the  slave-owner,  even  if  he  would  have  sold  his  slaves, 
would  hardly  have  sold  his  pride  or  his  power.  Nor,  the 
white  dominating  at  the  South,  and  swaying  by  his  com 
pact  force  the  policy  of  the  Union,  would  there  have  been 
strong  security  against  the  practical  re-enslavement  of  the 
negro.  Such  changes  can  hardly  be  brought  about  peace 
fully  by  anything  but  superior  power,  such  as  that  of  the 
British  Parliament,  which  emancipated  the  slaves  in  the 
West  Indies,  or  that  of  an  autocracy  such  as  emancipated 
the  serfs  in  Russia.  We  cannot  say  what  might  have 
happened  had  the  colonies  not  parted  violently  from  the 
mother  country.  They  might  have  gone  with  her  in 
emancipation.  They  might  have  fallen  into  two  groups, 
one  free,  the  other  slave ;  and  in  that  case  freedom,  by 
its  moral  and  industrial  superiority  might  have  ultimately 
prevailed. 

The  philosophic  abolitionism  of  Jefferson  and  his  com 
peers  had  long  since  died  out.  It  grew  faint  after  the  in 
vention  of  the  cotton-gin,  which  made  cotton  the  immensely 
profitable  staple  of  the  South,  and  it  received  its  death 
stroke  in  the  slave  insurrection  of  1832.  Nothing  was 
left  of  it  but  a  colonization  society  for  transporting  free 
negroes  to  Africa,  and  there  forming  them  into  a  com 
munity  to  be  the  germ  of  a  negro  civilization.  "But  this 
was  at  best  a  plan  for  ladling  out  the  sea,  and  was  sus 
pected  by  abolitionists  of  being  a  scheme  for  getting  rid  of 
black  citizens.  Slavery  was  now  dominant  in  the  United 
States.  It  elected  the  Presidents,  it  filled  the  offices,  it 
swayed  the  Senate,  it  cowed  the  House  of  Representatives 
and  the  nation  generally  by  threats  of  breaking  up  the 
Union,  the  idol  of  an  American  heart.  Its  leaders  in 


228  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

Congress  were  in  their  way  statesmen,  holding  their  seats, 
unlike  the  representatives  of  popular  constituencies,  by  a 
sure  tenure,  devoted  through  life  to  politics,  accustomed 
to  command.  It  held  the  Northern  merchants  by  the  bonds 
of  a  vast  commercial  interest  and  a  great  debt  due  to  them 
as  providers  of  its  capital.  A  New  York  trader  would  tell 
abolitionists  plainly  that  he  knew  as  well  as  they  did  that 
slavery  was  wrong,  but  New  York  commerce  was  bound  up 
with  it,  and  abolitionists  must  be  put  down.  Over  the 
mercantile  society  of  the  North,  especially  over  its  wealthy 
chiefs,  the  South  threw  the  unfailing  spell  of  aristocracy. 
The  Irishman  was  the  faithful  liegeman  of  the  political 
power  which  enabled  him  to  keep  his  foot  on  the  neck  of 
the  negro,  and  O'Connell's  denunciations  of  slavery  were 
forgotten  or  disregarded.  The  genius  of  Roman  Catholi 
cism  and  of  High  Church  Anglicanism,  was,  to  say  the 
least,  not  intolerant  of  slavery.  The  Protestant  churches 
were  fearful  of  a  rupture  with  their  Southern  wings. 
Their  clergy,  moreover,  had  commercial  pewholders  and 
trustees.  All,  or  almost  all  of  them,  in  proclaiming  the 
wrath  of  heaven  against  sins,  left  out  one  fashionable  sin ; 
all,  or  almost  all  of  them,  preached  submission  to  the  law. 
Submission  to  the  law,  in  fact,  seemed  a  paramount  duty  to 
the  mass  of  a  law-abiding  people ;  the  people  were  in  their 
consciences  persuaded  that  they  were  indefeasibly  bound 
by  the  covenant  made  with  slavery  in  the  constitution. 
Popular  literature  bowed  to  the  yoke,  and  even  missionary 
works  were  expurgated  in  deference  to  slavery.  Foreign 
lights  of  freedom  and  philanthropy,  brought  into  this 
atmosphere,  burned  dim.  Kossuth,  when  he  visited  the 
United  States,  excused  himself  from  touching  the  question 
as  it  was  not  one  of  national  independence,  and  Father 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  229 

Mathew  could  not  remember  that  he  had  signed  an  anti- 
slavery  manifesto.  The  slave  owner  was  master  of  opinion 
as  well  as  of  Congress. 

Still  there  were  protests.  There  were  political  protests 
against  the  aggrandizement  of  the  slave  power.  Opposition 
had  been  made  on  that  ground  to  the  acquisition  of  Texas, 
and  a  compromise  had  been  enforced.  There  had  been  a 
series  of  petitions  for  the  abolition  of  slavery  in  the  federal 
District  of  Columbia,  over  which  Congress  had  undoubted 
power.  The  Southerners  in  Congress  had  tried  to  impose 
the  gag  by  decreeing  that  no  petition  relating  to  slavery 
should  be  received.  This  called  forth  a  doughty  champion 
of  the  right  of  petition  in  the  person  of  Quincy  Adams, 
who  when  he  had  failed  at  the  election  for  the  Presidency, 
instead  of  returning  to  ex-presidential  nullity,  went  into 
the  House  of  Representatives,  and  there,  without  avowing 
himself  an  abolitionist,  waged  a  long  and  memorable  war 
against  the  gag.  One  day  the  old  man  announced  that  he 
held  in  his  hand  a  petition  signed  by  slaves.  A  tornado  of 
Southern  wrath  ensued.  Waiting  till  it  was  spent  Adams 
announced  that  the  petition  was  in  favour  of  slavery.  Sew- 
ard's  brilliant  star  now  glittered  in  the  anti-slavery  quarter 
above  the  political  horizon.  By  him  were  uttered  the  fate 
ful  words,  "  irrepressible  conflict."  Sumner,  a  senator  from 
Massachusetts,  stood  forth  as  an  open  and  passionate  enemy 
not  only  of  slavery,  but  of  the  slave-owners.  Chase,  Ham 
ilton  Fish,  Wade,  and  Foot  were  strenuous  on  the  same 
side.  The  slave  trade  in  Columbia  at  least  had  been 
stopped,  and  the  droves  no  longer  passed  by  the  portals  of 
the  Capitol  of  liberty. 

Nor  were  morality  and  religion  mute  though  their  voices 
were  low.  Emerson  assailed  slavery  with  philosophy,  the 


230  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

author  of  the  "  Biglow  Papers  "  with  ridicule.  Channing 
pronounced  on  it  a  condemnation  measured  and  wary, 
going,  however,  so  far  as  to  say  that,  rather  than  give  up 
Texas  to  it  he  would  see  the  Union  repealed.  Theodore 
Parker  denounced  it  more  fearlessly,  and  his  sermon  on  the 
death  of  Webster,  the  great  apostate,  is  the  flower  of  anti- 
slavery  eloquence.  Even  in  the  orthodox  churches  there 
were  searchings  of  heart  and  as  to  the  lawfulness  of  slave- 
holding,  which  in  one  case  brought  on  schism  between  the 
Northern  and  Southern  wings.  Nor  could  the  Christian 
doctrine  of  brotherhood  be  preached  without  pricking  con 
science  on  the  forbidden  theme.  Mrs.  Beecher  Stowe  by 
her  "  Uncle  Tom's  Cabin,"  which  swept  Europe  as  well  as 
America,  did  as  much  for  the  anti-slavery  cause  as  could  be 
done  for  any  cause  by  a  work  of  fiction,  which  everybody 
reads  with  a  feeling  of  its  unreality.  But  slavery  had  more 
ardent  and  uncompromising  foes.  Lundy,  a  mechanic,  who 
had  lived  on  one  of  the  highways  of  the  home  slave  trade, 
and  had  seen  the  coffles  go  by,  went  forth  on  a  humble  cru 
sade,  lecturing  even  in  a  Southern  State,  where  his  gentle 
ness  seems  to  have  been  his  protection,  and  afterwards 
publishing  a  little  anti-slavery  journal.  He  was  presently 
joined  by  William  Lloyd  Garrison,  a  young  journalist  of 
•oromise,  who  devoted  his  life  to  the  cause.  At  Baltimore, 
a  port  of  the  slave  trade,  Garrison  denounced  in  his  journal 
a  New  England  merchant  who,  false  to  New  England  prin 
ciple,  was  lending  his  ship  to  the  trade.  He  was  convicted 
of  libel  and  suffered  imprisonment,  which  he  underwent 
with  a  light  heart,  drawing  from  it  fresh  devotion.  In 
face  of  an  adverse  world  he  brought  out  The  Liberator,  an 
anti-slavery  journal  on  the  humblest  scale,  at  Boston,  print 
ing  as  well  as  writing  it  with  his  own  hands,  and  living  in 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  231 

apostolic  poverty,  in  the  meanest  lodging  on  the  scantiest 
fare.  For  thirty-five  years  he  continued  this  work.  It 
brought  him  no  money  but  it  brought  him  disciples.  His 
doctrine  was  thorough-going.  He  denounced  slavery  not 
only  as  an  evil  but  as  a  crime  and  the  sum  of  all  crimes. 
He  was  for  nothing  less  than  immediate,  unconditional, 
and  uncompensated  abolition,  so  that  between  him  and  the 
slave-owner  there  was  internecine  war.  At  the  North,  if 
there  was  not  slavery,  there  was  prejudice  of  colour  the 
most  intense.  The  negro  was  worse  than  servile,  he  was 
unclean.  No  white  would  eat  with  him,  share  a  public 
conveyance  with  him,  kneel  beside  him  in  church.  Fellow 
ship  with  him  would  have  been  social  ruin,  intermarriage 
as  bad  as  incest.  The  slightest  taint  of  negro  blood  was 
hopeless  degradation.  On  this  prejudice  Garrison  trampled, 
openly  consorting  with  blacks,  and  carrying  about  with 
him  as  his  fellow  crusader,  the  eloquent  Douglas.  Frankly 
acknowledging  that  the  constitution  established  slavery,  he 
blasphemed  that  idol,  calling  it  an  agreement  with  hell  and 
a  covenant  with  death,  and  at  last  publicly  burned  it  before 
a  multitude  on  the  fourth  of  July.  One  stormy  night,  in  a 
back  street  of  Boston  where  negroes  dwelt,  Garrison,  with 
eleven  friends,  founded  the  first  anti-slavery  society,  which 
presently  became  the  mother  of  hundreds,  the  cause  find 
ing  its  way  to  the  hearts  of  simple  people  who  did  not  hold 
Southern  securities  and  were  not  politicians.  Wendell 
Phillips,  a  scion  of  Boston  aristocracy,  the  finest  platform 
speaker  of  his  day,  joined  the  movement  and  became  the 
most  fiery  of  its  champions.  His  language,  that  of  The 
Liberator,  and  of  the  abolitionists  generally,  was  cutting, 
not  unfrequently  too  cutting,  and  was  fiercely  resented. 
The  South  boiled  with  fury,  threatened  the  agitators  with 


232  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

personal  vengeance,  rifled  the  mails  which  contained  their 
tracts.  Commercial  interest,  political  timidity,  and  colour 
feeling  at  the  North,  responded  to  the  angry  call  of  the 
South.  Abolitionists  were  mobbed  and  insulted,  they  were 
dragged  before  magistrates  who  knew  no  justice,  their 
meetings  were  broken  up,  one  of  their  halls  was  burned, 
one  of  them,  defending  himself  and  his  party,  was  slain. 
A  school  which  a  lady  had  opened  for  negro  girls  was 
broken  up,  and  she  was  driven  away  with  insult ;  and  this 
in  moral  and  orderly  Connecticut.  Garrison  himself  was 
assailed  at  Boston  by  a  mob  of  "  highly  respectable  citi 
zens,"  dragged  through  the  streets  with  a  rope  round  him. 
and  found  shelter  from  worse  violence  only  in  a  gaol. 
Public  exasperation  had  been  inflamed  to  the  utmost  by 
the  importation  of  Thompson,  a  famous  anti-slavery  lec 
turer  from  England,  whose  country  was  unbeloved,  and 
whose  interference  was  taken  as  an  affront  to  the  nation. 
Abolition  societies  nevertheless  multiplied.  They  multi 
plied  notwithstanding  divisions  in  their  camp,  contests  for 
leadership,  the  extravagances  of  wild  enthusiasts  who  had 
fastened  themselves  on  the  cause,  and  the  identification 
of  the  movement  by  its  leader  with  other  movements  of 
which  an  era  teeming  with  change  was  full,  but  to  which 
it  had  no  relation,  such  as  opposition  to  bibliolatry  or  Sab 
batarianism,  and  theories  of  government,  or  rather  of  spirit 
ual  emancipation  from  temporal  government,  which,  in  the 
world  as  it  was,  must  have  led  to  despotism  or  anarchy. 
Garrison's  sole  aim  was  to  awaken  the  conscience  of  the 
people.  Political  action  and  even  the  use  of  the  suffrage 
he  renounced,  dreading  nothing  so  much  as  that  his  cru 
sade  should  become  a  political  party  with  party  ambition 
and  venality.  There  was  another  abolitionist  movement 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  233 

led  by  Birney,  a  man  of  admirable  character,  a  slave  owner 
who  had  freed  his  own  slaves,  and  underwent  much  perse 
cution  for  the  cause.  This  movement  was  political.  It 
sought,  hopelessly  enough,  the  abolition  of  slavery  by  con 
stitutional  action,  and  its  vote  in  a  New  York  election  had 
taken  the  Presidency  from  the  waverer  Clay. 

The  North  generally,  though  not  true  to  morality  on  the 
subject  of  slavery,  remained  true  to  the  principles  of  a 
republican  constitution.  It  resented  the  interference  with 
the  right  of  petition,  it  resented  the  aggression  on  the 
freedom  of  speech  and  of  the  press.  The  Southern  slave 
was  far  away;  his  wail  hardly  reached  the  Northern  ear. 
But  when,  under  the  new  fugitive  slave  law,  the  Northern 
people  saw  with  their  own  eyes  the  slave-hunter  plying  his 
trade  in  their  cities,  and  beheld  innocent  men  and  women 
dragged  from  their  asylum  and  borne  off  to  chains,  when 
they  witnessed  tragic,  and  sometimes  murderous  struggles 
between  the  negro  and  his  captor,  their  hearts  were  moved. 
When  the  negro  Anthony  Burns  was  carried  off  from 
Boston,  the  hearth  of  freedom,  there  was  an  uprising  of 
the  citizens.  A  life  was  lost  in  the  fray.  It  was  necessary 
to  call  out  troops,  and  the  slave  was  led  away  with  great 
military  parade  amidst  the  execrations  of  the  multitude 
and  along  streets  hung  with  black.  The  love  of  excite 
ment  blending  with  philanthropy,  an  "  underground  rail 
way  "  was  organized  to  forward  slaves  to  Canada  where 
they  were  safe  under  the  British  flag.  Some  of  the  States 
passed  Liberty  Bills,  giving  those  claimed  as  slaves  secu 
rities  for  justice  which  the  fugitive  slave  law  denied  them  ; 
and  these  were  treated  by  the  South,  not  without  some 
reason,  as  breaches  of  the  constitution  and  acts  of  dis 
union.  To  the  mine  thus  charged,  the  match  was  applied 


234  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP 

by  Stephen  Douglas,  a  Western  politician,  and  the  type  o1' 
his  class.  He  was  about  the  first  notable  instance  of  the 
power  of  voice  in  politics,  which  the  increasing  size  of 
audiences  has  enhanced,  and  is  still  enhancing.  His  force 
as  a  speaker  contrasted  with  the  smallness  of  his  stature 
caused  him  to  be  nicknamed  "  The  Little  Giant."  HLs 
eloquence  was  of  the  most  Boanergic  kind.  In  the  midst 
of  his  thundering,  says  an  eye-witness,  to  save  himself  froir. 
choking,  he  stripped  off  and  cast  away  his  cravat,  unbut 
toned  his  Avaistcoat,  and  had  the  air  and  aspect  of  a  half- 
naked  pugilist.  He  was  able,  prompt,  and  unscrupulous 
in  debate.  It  occurred  to  him  that  the  quiver  of  the  Demo 
cratic  party,  to  which  he  belonged,  was  spent.  To  replenish 
it  he  invented  or  revived  the  doctrine  of  squatter  sover 
eignty,  according  to  which  the  settlers  in  any  Territory 
were  to  decide  for  themselves  in  framing  their  constitution 
whether  they  would  admit  slavery  or  not.  This  upset  the 
Missouri  compromise,  geographical  compromise  altogether, 
and  its  tendency  was  to  make  slavery  national  instead  of  sec 
tional.  The  principle  of  squatter  sovereignty  was  presently 
applied  on  the  motion  of  Douglas  by  the  Kansas-Nebraska 

1854.  Act  to  the  Territory  of  Kansas,  a  portion  of  the  Louisi 
ana  purchase.  As  if  in  concert  with  Douglas's  move, 
Taney,  who  had  been  rewarded  for  his  service  to  Andrew 
Jackson  in  the  destruction  of  the  bank,  with  the  chief  jus 
ticeship  of  the  Supreme  Court,  went  out  of  his  way  in  the 

1857.  case  of  a  claim  to  liberty  on  the  part  of  a  negro,  Dred 
Scott,  which  came  before  him,  to  rule  that  Congress  had  no 
right  to  prohibit  slavery  in  the  Territories,  and  that  the 
Missouri  compromise  was  unconstitutional.  At  the  same 
time,  he  laid  it  down  that  the  negro  was  not  included  by 
the  framers  of  the  constitution  in  the  designation  of  "  man  '' 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  235 

or  as  having  any  rights  against  the  white,  though  it  appeared 
that  at  the  time  when  the  constitution  was  framed,  some 
freed  negroes  were  enjoying  civil  rights  in  Massachusetts, 
and  had  been  in  arms  for  colonial  freedom.  The  Chief  Jus 
tice  did  not  say  whether  if  the  negro  had  no  rights  against 
the  white  man,  the  white  man  had  any  rights  against  the 
negro,  or  whether  the  negro  was  morally  at  liberty  to  kill 
or  rob  the  white  man.  By  this  presentation  of  the  ini 
quity,  naked  and  in  its  most  repulsive  form,  Taney  did  no 
small  harm  to  the  party  which  he  intended  to  aid.  It  has 
been  said  that  slavery  plucked  ruin  on  its  own  head  by  its 
aggressive  violence.  It  could  not  help  showing  its  native 
temper,  nor  could  it  help  feeding  its  hunger  of  land, 
insisting  on  the  restoration  of  its  runaways,  or  demanding 
a  foreign  policy  such  as  would  fend  off  the  approach  of 
emancipation.  But  Taney's  judgment  was  a  gratuitous 
aggression  and  an  insult  to  humanity  at  the  same  time,  for 
which,  supposing  that  the  Southern  leaders  inspired  it, 
they  paid  dear.  If  the  slave  was  mere  property,  his  owner 
might  be  entitled  to  take  him  anywhere,  and  thus  slavery 
might  be  made  national.  The  boast  of  a  daring  partisan 
of  slavery  might  be  fulfilled,  that  the  day  would  come 
when  men  might  be  bought  and  sold  in  Boston  as  freely 
as  any  other  goods.  The  issue,  which  all  the  politicians 
had  striven  to  keep  out  of  sight,  was  presented  in  its  most 
startling  and  shocking  form. 

The  Kansas-Nebraska  Act  having  passed,  Kansas  be 
came  the  prize  and  theatre  of  a  struggle  between  slavery 
and  the  Free  S oilers,  which  was  the  prelude  of  civil  war. 
From  the  adjoining  slave  State  of  Missouri,  the  vanguard 
of  slavery  came  in  to  occupy  the  ground ;  but  it  was  soon 
encountered  by  Free  Soil  men,  who  poured  in  from  the 


236  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHA  >. 

Northern  States  under  the  auspices  of  the  abolition  socie 
ties,  and  well  armed  loy  them  with  Sharp's  rifles,  oven  the 
clergy  being  carried  away  by  the  moral  movement  and 
going  so  far  as  to  open  their  churches  to  meetings  for  the 
purpose.  In  the  not  unbloody  conflict  which  followed, 
the  use  of  the  rifle,  the  bowie-knife,  arid  the  torch,  was 
curiously  combined  with  that  of  political  trickery  under  con 
stitutional  forms,  the  American  citizen  preserving  in  the 
hurly  of  the  fight  his  formal  respect  for  public  law.  The 
slavery  men  outran  their  opponents  in  fraudulently  fram 
ing  a  constitution  with  slavery,  called  the  Lecompton 
constitution,  the  acceptance  of  which  was  pressed  on  Con 
gress  by  a  pro-slavery  President.  The  Free  Soilers  framed 
a  constitution  without  slavery  at  Topeka.  Victory  in  the 
end  remained  with  the  Free  Soilers,  while  the  slavery  men 
from  Missouri  were  mere  raiders.  Nature,  too,  through 
the  soil  and  climate,  had  laid  her  ban  upon  slavery  in 
Kansas. 

In  Congress  meantime  the  heat  was  extreme ;  debate 
was  always  on  the  verge  of  violence.  Members  went  to 
the  Capitol  armed.  Sumner  having  made  a  speech  some 
what  more  than  scathing  and  extremely  personal,  on  what 
he  called  the  crime  against  Kansas,  Brooks,  a  Southern 
fire-eater,  was  so  stung  that  under  the  sacred  roof  of  the 
Senate  he  fell  on  Sumner  and  beat  him  within  an  inch  of 
his  life.  The  North  thrilled  with  indignation.  The 
South  applauded,  and  presented  Brooks  with  a  compli 
mentary  cane. 

The  political  hosts,  the  Free  Soil,  or  as  it  presently  called 
itself,  the  Republican  party  on  one  side,  and  that  of 
slavery  and  its  friends,  styled  Democratic,  on  the  other, 
were  now  drawn  out  for  battle.  The  Democrats  still 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  237 

bore  on  their  banner  the  old  Jeffersonian.  motto  of  State 
right,  opposed  to  federal  centralization.  But  State  right 
had  now  come  to  mean  the  safeguard  of  slavery  against 
national  interference.  In  the  period  of  flux  during  the 
process  of  formation,  the  Knownothing  party  acquired  a 
momentary  accession  of  strength  by  giving  refuge  to  old 
Whigs  who  shrank  from  abolition.  But  this  was  soon 
over,  and  Knownothingism  left  the  scene.  At  the  next 
presidential  election,  the  Republicans  put  up  Fremont, 
who  was  available  as  the  Path  Finder,  having  distin 
guished  himself  in  California  as  an  adventurous  explorer 
and  a  pioneer.  They  were  beaten,  and  Buchanan,  one  of  1856. 
the  framers  of  the  Ostend  manifesto,  became  the  last 
slavery  President.  But  the  Republicans  showed  a  strength 
which  was  an  earnest  of  future  victory. 

John  Brown,  a  zealot  of  the  Covenanting  or  Crom- 
wellian  stamp,  had  fought  against  slavery  in  Kansas  ruth 
lessly,  perhaps  more  than  ruthlessly,  though  some  Mis- 
sourian  ruffians  instead  of  shooting,  he  forced  at  the  point 
of  the  rifle  for  the  first  time  probably  in  their  lives,  to 
kneel  and  pray.  One  of  Brown's  sons  was  shot  by  a  cleri 
cal  champion  of  slavery  from  Missouri.  Exalted  by  his 
anti-slavery  enthusiasm  almost  to  the  pitch  of  madness,  he 
afterwards  entered  Virginia  with  two  sons  and  a  small 
band,  seized  Harper's  Ferry,  where  there  was  a  Federal  1859. 
arsenal,  and  called  the  slaves  to  freedom.  No  slaves 
answered  his  call.  He  was  soon  surrounded,  with  his 
party;  his  two  sons  were  shot,  and  he,  fighting  with 
the  coolest  intrepidity,  was  wounded  and  overpowered.  He 
was  hanged  with  military  parade  and  met  his  fate  with 
more  than  martyr  calmness  and  courage.  His  bearing 
impressed  his  enemies.  The  consolations  of  religion  ten- 


238  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAI. 

dered  him  by  a  pro-slavery  clergyman,  he  declined,  remem 
bering  perhaps  the  clerical  filibuster  in  Kansas.  Virginia 
was  filled  with  panic  and  rage.  At  the  North  there  was 
much  sympathy  for  John  Brown,  disguising  itself  under 
faint  disapprobation.  In  the  war  which  ensued,  his  figure 
was  glorified,  and  his  soul,  marching  on  in  the  battle  hymn, 
led  the  hosts  of  emancipation  against  the  slave  power. 

In  1861  came  the  catastrophe.  By  this  time  the  spirit 
of  secession  was  rife  among  the  leaders  of  the  South. 
On  the  nomination  of  Presidential  candidates  the  Demo 
cratic  party  split.  The  thorough-going  adherents  of 
slavery  nominated  Breckinridge,  the  party  of  the  union 
with  slavery  including  the  majority  of  the  Northern  Demo 
crats,  nominated  Stephen  Douglas.  A  third  section,  styl 
ing  itself  Constitutional,  and  vainly  hoping  to  shut  out  th-3 
question  of  slavery  and  save  the  constitution,  nominated 
Bell  for  President  and  for  Vice-President  Everett,  the 
model  orator,,  who  at  this  crisis  essayed  to  pour  oil  on 
the  raging  waters  by  going  round  and  lecturing  on  the 
character  of  Washington. 

The  Republican  convention  was  held  at  Chicago,  and 
moral  as  was  the  cause  in  which  it  met,  there  was  tho 
usual  display  of  electioneering  arts,  the  usual  bargaining, 
and  the  usual  uproar.  Seward  was  the  most  eminent 
man  of  the  party  and  its  natural  candidate.  For  that 
very  reason  he  was  set  aside,  eminence  being  always 
dogged  by  rivalries  and  jealousies.  The  choice  fell  on 
Abraham  Lincoln,  a  man  whose  eminence  was  not  yet 
such  as  to  give  umbrage,  a  citizen  of  the  powerful  State 
in  which  the  convention  was  held,  and  available  as 
a  rail-splitter.  Rails  said  to  have  been  made  by  him 
were  carried  about  the  convention.  Abraham  Lincoln  is 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  239 

assuredly  one  of  the  marvels  of  history.  No  land  but 
America  has  produced  his  like.  This  destined  chief  of 
a  nation  in  its  most  perilous  hour  was  the  son  of  a  thrift 
less  and  wandering  settler,  bred  in  the  most  sordid  poverty. 
He  had  received  only  the  rudiments  of  education,  and 
though  he  afterwards  read  eagerly  such  works  as  were 
within  his  reach,  it  is  wonderful  that  he  should  have 
attained  as  a  speaker  and  writer  a  mastery  of  language, 
and  a  pure  as  well  as  effective  style.  He  could  look  back 
smiling  on  the  day  when  his  long  shanks  appeared  bare 
below  the  shrunken  leather  breeches  which  were  his  only 
nether  garment.  His  frame  was  gaunt  and  grotesque  but 
mighty.  He  stood  six  feet  four,  and  was  said  to  have 
lifted  a  cask  full  of  beer  and  to  have  drunk  out  of  the 
bunghole.  This  made  him  a  hero  with  the  Clary  Grove 
boys.  He  had  a  strong  and  eminently  fair  understanding, 
w^ith  great  powers  of  patient  thought  which  he  cultivated 
by  the  study  of  Euclid.  In  all  his  views  there  was  a 
simplicity  which  had  its  source  in  the  simplicity  of  his 
character.  His  local  popularity  was  due  largely  to  his 
humour,  and  the  stock  of  good  stories,  always  pointed, 
though  not  always  delicate,  which  through  life  it  was  his 
delight  to  collect  and  repeat.  At  the  same  time  he  was 
melancholy,  touched  with  the  pathos  of  human  life,  fond 
of  mournful  poetry,  religious  though  not  orthodox,  with  a 
strong  sense  of  an  overruling  Providence  which  when  he 
was  out  of  spirits  sometimes  took  the  shape  of  fatalism. 
His  melancholy  was  probably  deepened  by  his  gloomy 
surroundings  and  by  misadventures  in  love.  Like  his 
father  he  was  without  habits  of  settled  industry.  He  tried 
boating,  he  tried  store-keeping,  he  tried  surveying,  he 
tried  soldiering  in  an  Indian  war,  though  he  never  came 


240  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAI-. 

under  fire.  At  last  he  became  a  lawyer,  or  rather  an 
advocate.  This  suited  him  better  and  he  pleaded  success 
fully  in  rude  courts.  But  for  his  roving  spirit  politics 
was  the  trade.  Those  who  knew  him  best  thought  bin 
intensely  ambitious,  and  he  was  probably  the  more  dis 
posed  to  public  life,  when  his  domestic  happiness  had 
been  marred  by  marriage  with  a  woman,  his  love  of  whon 
was  so  doubtful  that  he  once  shirked  the  wedding,  after 
losing  by  death  a  woman  whom  he  certainly  loved.  He 
was  elected,  one  of  a  group  called  "  the  long  nine,"  to  the 
Legislature  of  his  State.  As  a  politician  he  played  the 
game ;  he  jumped  out  of  window  to  break  a  quorum,  an  1 
conspired  in  wrecking  a  hostile  journal  by  the  furtive 
insertion  of  a  ruinous  editorial.  Still  his  character  was  at 
bottom  thoroughly  sound.  Both  as  an  advocate  and  as 
a  politician  he  was  "  honest  Abe."  As  an  advocate  he 
would  throw  up  his  brief  when  he  knew  that  his  case  was 
bad.  He  equipped  himself  for  politics  by  a  careful  study 
of  constitutional  law,  while  from  his  early  life  he  drew  ati 
inestimable  knowledge  of  the  minds  and  hearts  of  those 

O 

whom  he  called  the  plain  people.  The  sight  of  slavery  in 
his  early  wanderings,  and  still  more  perhaps  the  natural 
love  of  justice  which  was  strong  in  him,  had  made  him  a 
Free  S oiler.  But  his  abolitionism  was  temperate.  In  op 
posing  slavery  he  never  reviled  the  slave-owners,  nor  was 
he  blind  to  the  inferiority  of  the  negro.  He  held  the 
negro  to  be  the  white  man's  equal  only  in  certain  inalien 
able  rights,  in  the  right,  above  all,  to  eat  the  bread  which 
his  own  hands  had  earned.  He  had  been  made  known  to 
fame  by  a  series  of  platform  tournaments  with  the  redoubt 
able  Stephen  Douglas,  in  which  his  powers  of  reasoning 
fairly  as  well  as  closely,  and  of  telling  statement,  were 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  241 

displayed.  In  one  of  his  speeches  he  had  uttered  words 
not  less  memorable  than  Seward's  "  irrepressible  conflict." 
"  A  house,"  he  said,  "  divided  against  itself  cannot  stand. 
I  believe  this  government  cannot  endure  permanently  half 
slave  and  half  free.  I  do  not  expect  the  Union  to  be 
dissolved ;  I  do  not  expect  the  house  to  fall ;  but  I 
do  expect  it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will  become 
all  one  thing  or  all  the  other.  Either  the  opponents  of 
slavery  will  arrest  the  further  spread  of  it,  and  place  it 
where  the  public  mind  shall  rest  in  the  belief  that  it  is  in 
course  of  ultimate  extinction,  or  its  advocates  will  push  it 
forward  till  it  shall  become  alike  lawful  in  all  the  States, 
old  as  well  as  new,  North  as  well  as  South."  After  his 
campaign  in  Illinois,  he  had  been  brought  to  speak  at  New 
York,  and,  in  spite  of  his  ungainly  figure  and  quaint 
costume,  had  made  a  deep  impression.  But  it  was  mainly 
to  cabal  against  Seward  that  Lincoln  owed  the  Republican 
nomination.  He  was  elected  President  after  a  campaign  of  i860. 
intense  excitement,  commerce  struggling  hard  to  escape 
from  the  yawning  gulf  by  the  election  of  Douglas  as  a  con 
servative.  But  the  votes  cast  for  him  fell  short  by  a  million 
of  those  cast  for  Douglas,  Breckinridge,  and  Bell  together, 
and  his  support  came  almost  entirely  from  the  North. 

There  could  be  no  mistake  about  the  significance  of  the 
election  by  Northern  votes  of  a  President  who  looked  for 
ward  to  seeing  slavery  "put  where  the  people  would  be 
satisfied  that  it  was  in  course  of  ultimate  extinction."  As 
a  Southern  Senator  said,  Republicans  did  not  mean  to  cut 
down  the  tree  of  slavery,  but  they  meant  to  gird  it  about 
and  make  it  die.  Southern  fire-eaters  welcomed  the  event. 
From  South  Carolina,  the  centre  of  slavery,  went  up  the  ^ec. 
signal  rocket  of  Secession  amidst  transports  of  enthusiasm,  I860. 


242  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

which  the  women  frantically  shared,  unconscious  of  the 
coming  doom.  It  was  answered  in  rapid  succession  by  the 
1861.  other  States  of  the  group,  Mississippi,  Alabama,  Louisiana, 
Texas,  and  Georgia,  though  in  Georgia  not  without  a 
strong  spasm  of  reluctance.  Afterwards  followed  the 
more  Northern  group,  North  Carolina,  Tennessee,  and 
Virginia.  The  Old  Dominion  was  conservative,  and,  as 
the  slave-breeding  State,  had  no  interest  in  the  renewal  of 
the  slave  trade.  Unionism  made  a  stand  in  East  Tennes 
see,  Western  Virginia,  and  the  uplands  of  North  Carolina, 
hill  districts  from  which  nature  had  repelled  slavery.  The 
border  States,  Maryland,  Kentucky,  and  Missouri,  ir 
which  slavery  existed  but  was  not  dominant,  wavered  anc 
remained  debatable,  the  two  last  nearly  to  the  end,  though 
all  three  were  kept  formally  in  the  Union.  Otherwise; 
secession  swept  the  South,  though  more  or  less  of  violence, 
no  doubt  was  everywhere  used  to  crush  dissent  or  hesita 
tion,  and  the  revolution  was  the  work  of  a  thorough-going 
minority,  as  revolutions  usually  are.  The  ordinances  by 
which  the  States  had  severally  entered  the  Union  were 
repealed,  a  congress  was  held,  and  a  Southern  confederacy 
was  formed,  with  a  constitution  modelled  in  general  after 
that  of  the  United  States,  but  distinctly  recognizing  State 
sovereignty  and  proclaiming  negro-slavery  as  the  founda 
tion  of  the  new  commonwealth.  Changes  of  detail,  per 
haps  improvements,  were  made,  such  as  the  lengthening 
of  the  Presidential  term,  with  the  abolition  of  the  power  of 
re-election,  and  the  admission  of  ministers  of  state  to  Con 
gress  ;  but  it  is  needless  to  dwell  on  them,  as  they  were 
still-born.  Alexander  Stephens,  the  Vice-President,  said, 
"  The  negro,  by  nature  and  by  the  curse  against  Canaan, 
is  fitted  for  the  condition  he  occupies  in  our  system.  An 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  243 

architect,  in  the  construction  of  buildings,  lays  the  founda 
tion  with  the  proper  material,  the  granite  ;  then  comes 
the  brick  or  the  marble.  The  substratum  of  our  society  is 
made  of  the  material  fitted  by  nature  for  it,  and  by  ex 
perience  we  know  that  it  is  the  best  not  only  for  the 
superior,  but  for  the  inferior,  race  that  it  should  be  so.  It 
is,  indeed,  in  conformity  with  the  Creator.  It  is  not  for 
us  to  inquire  into  the  wisdom  of  His  ordinances,  or  to 
question  them.  For  His  own  purposes  He  has  made  one 
race  to  differ  from  another  as  He  has  made  one  '  star  to 
differ  from  another  star  in  glory.'  The  great  objects 
of  humanity  are  best  attained  when  conformed  to  His 
laws,  in  the  constitution  of  governments  as  well  as  in  all 
things  else.  Our  confederacy  is  founded  upon  a  strict 
conformity  with  these  laws.  The  stone  which  was  rejected 
by  the  first  builders  is  become  the  chief  stone  of  the  cor 
ner  in  our  new  edifice."  After  such  an  avowal,  and  in 
face  of  the  fact  that  the  line  of  political  cleavage  exactly 
coincided  with  that  of  slavery,  following  its  windings  both 
generally  and  in  the  exceptional  cases  of  Tennessee,  Vir 
ginia,  and  North  Carolina,  while  the  border  States,  which 
were  half  slave,  remained  politically  waverers,  who  could 
doubt  that  slavery  was  the  cause  of  secession?  The  ques 
tion  between  free  trade  and  protection,  which  the  emissa 
ries  of  the  South  in  free  trade  England  sought  to  present 
as  the  real  cause,  had,  indeed,  always  divided  the  agricul 
tural  South  from  the  manufacturing  North,  and  had  in 
Calhoun's  time  given  rise  to  Nullification.  But  it  was 
derivative,  and  its  influence  was  secondary.  The  Confed 
eracy  was  in  its  essence  a  slave-power,  and  as  such  boldly 
flaunted  its  banner  in  the  face  of  humanity.  Jefferson 
Davis,  a  man  after  the  Southern  heart,  able,  impetuous, 


244  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

and  overbearing,  was  elected  President.  His  government 
was  recognized  and  obeyed  over  a  compact  territory  larger 
than  France,  Spain,  Portugal,  and  the  British  Islands  put 
together,  with  a  population  greater  than  that  of  the  old 
thirteen  colonies,  and  with  many  times  their  wealth.  A 
new  flag,  or  rather  the  old  flag  with  a  secessionist  varia 
tion,  was  unfurled,  and  the  slave  power  took  its  place  for 
four  years  among  the  nations.  Richmond,  a  new  capital, 
confronted  Washington.  Under  whatever  constitutional 
forms  the  Confederate  government  might  be  set  up,  tlu 
South,  when  the  war  had  commenced,  had  no  constitution 
but  that  of  a  beleaguered  city.  Its  President  became  a 
commandant;  its  Congress  sat  in  secret,  mutely  register 
ing  his  decrees;  all  safeguards  for  personal  liberty  weie 
suspended ;  the  government  assumed  absolute  mastery 
not  only  of  the  property  but  also  of  the  persons  of  a  .1 
citizens  for  the  purposes  of  the  war ;  the  press  became  a 
sounding-board.  The  revolution  which  had  given  birth 
to  such  liberties  could  not  fail  to  provoke  the  mockery  of 
the  North,  but  it  was  invasion  which  made  the  government 
of  the  South  despotic,  and  laws  must  sleep  when  a  nation 
is  struggling  for  its  life.  It  was  true,  however,  that  the 
spirit  of  the  slave-owner  ruled  at  Richmond,  and  showed 
its  pitiless  and  masterful  temper  beyond  even  the  necessi 
ties  of  war. 

As  the  States  seceded,  their  representatives  withdrew 
from  Congress  with  farewells  more  or  less  defiant.  Had 
Jackson  been  President,  instead  of  being  suffered  to  de 
part,  they  might  have  been  laid  by  the  heels,  and  their  plot 
might  have  been  disconcerted  for  the  time.  But  Buchanan, 
besides  being  the  nominee  of  the  slave-owners,  was  a 
weak  man,  and  his  position  was  weaker  still.  He  was 


v.  RUPTURE    AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  245 

an  outgoing  President,  about  to  be  replaced  by  a  President 
elect  of  the  opposite  party.  These  intervals,  during  which 
government  is  severed  from  power,  are  a  weak  point  in  the 
American  constitution,  and  are  one  of  the  proofs  that  its 
franiers  failed  to  foresee  the  ascendancy  of  party,  and  the 
situations  which  would  thereby  be  created.  Buchanan 
first,  in  a  double-faced  manifesto,  pronounced  that  seces 
sion  was  unconstitutional,  but  coercion  was  illegal.  After 
wards,  Southerners  having  left  his  Cabinet,  and  being 
replaced  by  Unionist  Democrats,  he  somewhat  altered 
his  tone,  while  one  of  his  ministers,  General  Dix, 
sent  the  telegram,  "If  any  man  attempts  to  haul  down 
the  American  flag,  shoot  him  on  the  spot " ;  to  which 
the  spirit  of  the  North  gave  a  response  which  might 
have  been  a  warning  to  the  South.  But  Buchanan's  sole 
desire  was  to  be  gone,  and  cast  the  burden  on  his  successor. 
His  conduct  could  not  be  less  resolute  and  brave  than  that 
of  Congress,  which,  in  truth,  was  an  ominous  lesson  on  the 
character  of  the  politician  trained  in  the  caucus  and  upon 
the  platform.  Congress,  finding  that  disunion,  beneath 
the  threat  of  which  it  had  long  cowered,  had  really  come, 
fell  on  its  knees,  and  offered  the  slave  owners  boundless 
concessions.  It  was  ready  to  give  slavery  new  guarantees 
and  extension,  to  sharpen  still  more  the  fugitive  slave 
law,  to  deprive  the  negro  claimed  as  a  slave  of  the  last 
shred  of  legal  protection,  to  call  upon  the  States  to  repeal 
all  their  personal  liberty  bills,  to  extend  the  Missouri  com 
promise  line  to  the  Pacific,  and  admit  New  Mexico,  includ 
ing  Arizona,  with  a  slave  code,  to  satisfy  the  prejudice  of 
race  by  disqualifying  all  men  of  negro  blood  for  civil 
office.  It  even  offered  to  place  slavery  beyond  the  reach 
of  constitutional  amendment,  and  make  it,  so  far  as  law 


246  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP 

could  make  it,  eternal.  A  resolution  to  this  effect  passed 
the  House  by  a  vote  of  133  to  65,  and  the  Senate  by  24  to  12, 
just  the  requisite  two-thirds.  It  would,  as  Mr.  Elaine  says, 
"have  entrenched  slavery  securely  in  the  organic  law  of  the 
land,  and  elevated  the  privilege  of  the  slave-owner  beyonc, 
that  of  the  owner  of  any  other  species  of  property."  This 
resolution  received  the  vote  of  a  large  number  of  prom 
inent  Republicans,  and  if  the  Southern  members  of  Con 
gress  would  have  stooped  to  vote  instead  of  seceding  the}" 
might  have  riveted  their  political  yoke  on  the  neck  of  the 
American  nation  forever.  Even  pronounced  enemies  o: 
slavery,  such  as  Mr.  Seward  and  Mr.  Sunnier,  seem  to 
have  trembled  in  silence.  Nor  did  Congress  much  mis 
represent  its  constituents.  In  spite  of  all  the  signs  in  the 
political  sky,  nobody  had  believed  that  the  deluge  was 
coming ;  everybody  had  trusted  the  providence  which 
watched  over  the  American  Union.  When  the  crisis 
arrived  a  cold  shudder  ran  through  the  nation.  Local 
elections  began  to  go  against  the  Republicans.  The  Re 
publican  party,  Mr.  Blame  says,  was  utterly  demoralized. 
Its  great  organ  in  New  York  conceded  the  right  of  with 
drawing  from  the  Union,  declared  against  all  coercive 
measures,  and  even  said  that  the  South  had  as  good  a 
right  to  secede  from  the  Union  as  the  colonies  had  to 
secede  from  Great  Britain.  Democratic  organs  went 
further,  and  declared  the  election  of  Lincoln  a  greater 
provocation  than  that  which  the  American  colonies  had 
received  from  the  mother  country.  Those  who  spoke 
of  secession  as  rebellion  were  met  with  cries  of  dissent. 
Abolitionist  orators  and  lecturers  were  refused  a  hearing. 
Wendell  Phillips,  after  reviling  Lincoln  as  a  trimmer, 
would  himself  have  yielded  to  secession.  "Here,"  he 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  247 

said,  "  are  a  series  of  States,  girding  the  Gulf,  who  think 
that  their  peculiar  institutions  require  a  separate  govern 
ment.  They  have  a  right  to  settle  that  question  without 
appealing  to  you  or  me."  General  Scott,  the  head  of  the 
Federal  army,  was  so  far  carried  away  by  the  tide  of  panic 
as  to  propose  the  division  of  the  Union  into  four  separate 
confederations.  Men  clung  to  the  hope  that  the  trouble 
would  blow  over,  and  commerce  prayed  for  peace  at 
any  price. 

It  need  not,  however,  be  assumed  that  because  the 
North  did  not  take  arms  against  slavery,  nor  was  entitled 
to  the  sympathy  of  the  world  on  that  account,  it  had  no  mo 
tive  for  making  war  except  the  vulgar  desire  of  territorial 
aggrandizement.  Northern  men  might,  and  no  doubt  did, 
believe  that  they  were  fighting  for  a  violated  constitution, 
for  a  compact  which  had  been  faithlessly  broken,  for  the 
vindication  of  law,  reverence  for  which  had  been  deeply 
planted  in  their  hearts,  and  even  for  the  political  fortunes 
of  humanity,  which,  according  to  American  belief,  were 
embarked  in  the  ship  of  the  Union. 

Had  the  Confederates  played  their  game  warily,  had 
they  spoken  the  North  fair,  pleaded  the  hopeless  incom 
patibility  of  the  two  systems,  and  promised  friendship 
and  fidelity  to  commercial  engagements,  they  might  have 
been  let  part  in  peace.  But  wariness  was  not  Southern. 
Seeing  the  North  thus  cling  to  the  Union,  the  Southern 
gentlemen  thought  that  the  "  greasy  mechanic "  would 
not  fight,  and  they  dared  him  to  smell  Southern  powder 
and  taste  Southern  steel.  They  were  fatally  mistaken. 
The  greasy  mechanic  was  of  their  own  race,  and  though 
he  clung  to  the  Union,  he  would  fight. 

There  is  little  use  in  renewing  the  bottomless  contro- 


248  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

versy  about  the  State  sovereignty  and  the  right  of  seces 
sion.  The  constitution  was  on  this  point  a  Delphic  oracle. 
Its  framers  had  blinked  the  question  of  State  sovereignty, 
as  they  had  compromised  on  that  of  slavery.  They  could 
not  have  ventured  to  avow  that  the  States  were  disclaim 
ing  their  sovereignty  in  accepting  the  constitution.  They 
trusted  to  time,  and  had  slavery  been  out  of  the  way,  time 
would  have  done  the  work.  In  sentiment,  the  allegiance 
of  the  Northern  heart  was  to  the  Union.  The  Northern 
people  were  imbued  with  Webster's  sentiment.  Moreover, 
the  new  States,  which  now  outnumbered  the  old  thirteen, 
were  the  offspring  of  the  nation,  and  of  their  people  many 
were  immigrants  from  Europe,  strangers  to  any  original 
compact.  Thus  California,  on  the  far  Pacific  Coast,  being 
a  child  of  the  nation,  stood  steadily  by  the  cause  of  the 
Union.  The  allegiance  of  the  Southerner,  more  home- 
keeping  than  the  man  of  the  North,  and  with  a  narrower 
range  of  vision,  was  to  his  State,  which,  moreover,  he 
regarded  with  reason  as  the  bulwark  of  his  peculiar  insti 
tution.  Many  people  of  the  South,  who  had  no  personal 
interest  in  slavery,  and  were  opposed  to  secession,  thought 
it  was  their  duty  to  go  with  their  State,  and  their  sense  of 
their  duty  grew  stronger  when  their  State  was  invaded  by 
Northern  arms.  Lincoln  himself  had  said,  "  Any  people 
anywhere,  being  inclined  and  having  the  power,  have  the 
right  to  rise  up  and  shake  off  the  existing  government,  and 
form  a  neAV  one  that  suits  them  better.  This  is  a  most 
valuable,  a  most  sacred  right,  a  right  which  we  hope  and 
believe  is  to  liberate  the  world.  Nor  is  this  right  confined 
to  cases  in  which  the  whole  people  of  an  existing  govern 
ment  may  choose  to  exercise  it.  Any  portion  of  such 
people,  that  can,  may  revolutionize  and  make  their  own  of 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  249 

so  much  of  the  territory  as  they  inhabit."  So  had  thought 
the  American  people,  and,  therefore,  they  had  sympathized 
with  revolt  all  over  the  world.  Southern  revolution 
could  not  have  asked  for  a  clearer  sanction.  But  it  was 
not  necessary  to  invoke  formally  the  right  of  revolution. 
Wendell  Phillips  hit  the  mark/  Two  communities,  radi 
cally  differing  in  social  structure,  and,  therefore,  in  politi 
cal  requirements,  had  been  clamped  together  in  ill-assorted, 
uneasy,  contentious  and  immoral  union.  At  length,  in  the 
course  of  nature,  they  fell  asunder  and  formed  two  sepa 
rate  nations,  the  stronger  of  which  proceeded  to  attack, 
conquer,  and  reannex  the  weaker.  This  was  the  simple 
fact.  It  was  natural  that  the  mind  of  the  North  should 
be  possessed  by  the  ideas  of  union  and  the  constitution ; 
that  it  should  regard  secession  as  treason  and  rebellion. 
But  those  names  were  really  out  of  place,  as  the  North 
itself  was  fain  practically  to  confess.  Not  for  a  moment, 
or  in  a  single  instance,  did  it  treat  the  Southerners  as 
traitors  or  rebels.  From  the  very  outset  it  treated  them 
as  combatants  in  a  regular  war,  and  accepted  the  same 
treatment  at  their  hands.  The  threat  of  dealing  with  the 
crew  of  a  Confederate  privateer  as  pirates,  being  met  by  a 
threat  of  reprisal,  was  instantly  withdrawn.  Foreign 
powers  saw  this,  and  with  good  reason  at  once  recognized 
the  South  as  a  belligerent.  Even  the  term  civil  war  is 
hardly  correct,  since  this  was  not  a  struggle  between  two 
parties  for  the  same  land,  like  that  between  the  League 
and  the  Huguenots  in  France,  or  that  between  the  Cava 
liers  and  Roundheads  in  England,  but  between  two  com 
munities,  territorially  separate,  for  the  land  of  one  of  them 
which  the  other  had  taken  arms  to  reannex.  Only  in  the 
border  States,  in  each  of  which  two  parties  were  struggling 
for  ascendancy,  could  it  be  strictly  called  a  civil  war.  - 


250  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CIIAI-. 

Lincoln  stole  by  night  into  the  capital.  His  life  had 
been  threatened  on  his  journey  by  that  same  mob  at 
Baltimore,  the  Plug-uglies  as  they  were  called,  whic  i 
had  risen  and  massacred  in  favour  of  the  war  of  181i!. 
When  he  reached  Washington,  and  had  been  inaugurated 
under  military  protection,  his  situation  was  one  whic.i 
might  well  have  made  his  heart  sink.  Before  him  was 
secession.  Behind  him  were  fear  and  fainting  of  hearts. 
Around  him  was  treachery.  He  was  a  minority  President. 
That  he  had  been  raised  to  power  by  a  party,  not  by  the 
nation,  he  was  reminded  by  the  swarm  of  partisan  office- 
seekers,  which  surrounded  and  distracted  him  even  in  this 
supreme  hour.  He  had  hardly  a  good  adviser,  for  even 
Seward,  the  Secretary  of  State,  had  for  the  time  lost  his 
head,  and  talked  wildly  about  sinking  the  slavery  questio  i 
in  a  spirited  foreign  policy,  and  challenging  the  powers  of 
Europe  to  war.  His  greatest  encouragement  came,  perhaps, 
from  Stephen  Douglas,  who,  though  an  advocate  of  squat 
ter  sovereignty  and  slavery,  was  a  patriot  and  true  to  the 
Union.  Those  who  had  manoeuvred  the  rail-splitter  into 
the  nomination,  and  had  voted  him  into  the  Presidency, 
must  have  quaked.  But  they  had  chosen  much  better 
than  they  knew.  Lincoln  stood  firmly  on  his  own  feet, 
and  faced  the  peril  with  a  calmness  and  a  wisdom  drawn 
largely  from  his  moral  character  and  his  trust  in  Provi 
dence  ;  for  fear  is  generally  selfish,  and  Lincoln  could 
have  no  selfish  fears.  He  presented  himself  as  the  servant 
and  guardian  of  the  constitution,  naturally  failing  to  see 
that  nature  had  torn  up  that  compromise.  He  disavowed 
any  purpose  of  interfering  directly  or  indirectly  with 
slavery  in  the  States  where  it  existed,  declaring  that  he 
had  neither  the  right  nor  the  inclination  so  to  do ;  "  not 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  251 

to  save  slavery  or  any  minor  matter"  Avould  he  permit 
"the  wreck  of  government,  country,  and  constitution." 
The  preservation  of  the  Union,  with  or  without  slavery, 
he  proclaimed  as  his  paramount  duty.  The  Union,  he 
maintained,  was  perpetual,  a  government,  not  a  mere 
association  of  the  States,  and  all  resolves  and  ordinances 
to  the  contrary  were  invalid.  He  announced  his  intention 
of  holding  all  the  property,  exercising  the  authority, 
and  performing  the  functions  of  government  in  the 
Southern  States,  but  of  doing  this  without  violence  or 
bloodshed,  unless  they  were  forced  upon  him  by  the 
South.  "In  your  hands,  my  dissatisfied  fellow  country 
men,"  he  said,  "is  the  momentous  issue  of  civil  war. 
The  government  will  not  assail  you.  You  can  have  no 
conflict  without  being  yourselves  the  aggressors."  He 
appealed  to  the  principle  of  government  by  majorities, 
arguing  that  if  it  was  to  be  disregarded  the  end  would 
be  anarchy.  He  appealed  to  fraternal  affection,  and 
challenged  the  malcontents  to  point  out  an  instance  in 
which  the  constitution  had  been  plainly  violated.  Their 
answer  would  have  been  that  the  constitution  was  a  com 
pact,  to  which  the  election  of  a  President  holding  that 
slavery  was  to  be  placed  where  the  people  would  know 
that  it  was  in  the  course  of  ultimate  extinction,  had 
morally  put  an  end.  But  Lincoln  thus  kept  the  weather 
gage  of  opinion,  and  his  language,  moderate,  calm,  and 
conciliatory,  presented  a  favourable  contrast  to  the  violent 
and  somewhat  blustering  manifestos  of  his  Confederate 
rival.  His  repeated  disavowals  of  any  intention  of  inter 
fering  with  slavery  inevitably  estranged  thorough-going 
abolitionists.  Commissioners  from  the  South,  coming  to 
treat  in  the  name  of  an  independent  power,  he  refused 


252  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

to  receive,  though  Seward  was  inclined  to  dally  with  their 
overtures.  His  caution  kept  him  in  touch  with  general 
opinion.  Horace  Greeley  goes  so  far  as  to  assert,  reckon 
ing  by  the  votes  cast  in  the  Presidential  election,  that 
three-fifths  of  the  entire  American  people,  exclusive 
of  the  blacks,  "  sympathized  with  rebellion  in  so  far  as 
its  animating  purpose  was  the  fortification,  diffusion,  and 
aggrandizement  of  slavery."  To  be  kept  in  touch  with 
general  opinion  was  Lincoln's  statesmanship.  His  special 
object,  in  his  dealing  with  the  slavery  question,  was  the 
retention  in  the  Union  of  the  border  States,  Maryland, 
Kentucky,  and  Missouri,  the  scenes  of  a  fierce  struggle 
between  the  Unionist  and  Disunionist  parties,  which  were 
preserved  probably  in  great  measure  by  Lincoln's  policy 
from  secession.  It  was  to  propitiate  these  States  that, 
even  when  the  war  was  far  advanced,  he  put  forth  a  plan 
for  abolition  with  compensation.  He  had  also  to  consider 
the  military  men,  without  whom  an  army  could  not  be 
formed,  and  who  for  the  most  part  inclined  to  the  side  of 
slavery.  He  at  the  same  time  necessarily  renounced  his 
claim  to  the  sympathy  of  foreign  nations,  especially  of 
England,  who  could  not  be  expected  to  regard  the  in 
vasion  of  the  South  by  the  North  as  a  crusade  against 
slavery  when  the  President  declared  it  was  nothing  of  the 
kind.  The  Southern  Confederacy  was  avowedly  founded 
with  slavery  as  its  corner-stone.  It  was,  therefore,  under 
the  ban  of  humanity.  This  was  the  reason  for  desiring 
its  fall,  whatever  might  be  the  motives  of  its  assailant. 
For  the  unity  and  aggrandizement  of  the  American 
Republic  many  men  in  England  and  other  nations  cared, 
because  they  looked  with  hope  to  the  great  experiment 
of  American  democracy;  but  nobody  was  morally  bound  to 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  253 

care.  The  South  had  been  politic  enough  to  pay  homage 
to  the  opinion  of  the  world,  especially  of  the  British 
people,  and  perhaps,  at  the  same  time,  to  propitiate  the 
slave-breeding  State,  by  inserting  into  its  constitution 
a  renunciation  of  the  African  slave  trade,  though  it  was 
pretty  certain  that  had  the  slave  power  triumphed  this 
article  would  have  had  little  effect. 

War  broke  out  in  the  natural  quarter,  at  Charleston,  the 
fiery  heart  of  slavery,  the  memorial  shrine  of  Calhoun. 
Fort  Sumter,  in  Charleston  harbour,  was  held  by  its  com 
mander  for  the  Union.  The  government  at  Washington 
proceeded  to  revictual  it,  thereby  perhaps  committing,  as 
the  South  contended,  the  first  formal  act  of  war.  The  APnl 

lo, 

Confederates  bombarded  and  took  the  fort.  The  effect  was  1861. 
magical.  At  the  outrage  on  the  flag  the  North,  of  late  so 
cold 'and  quaking,  burst  into  a  general  flame  of  patriotic 
wrath.  Lincoln's  call  for  volunteers  was  answered  with 
enthusiasm,  and  the  "  irrepressible  conflict "  began.  The 
second  shot  was  fired  in  the  streets  of  Baltimore  where  the 
Plug-uglies  rose  for  slavery,  and  attacked  volunteers  on 
their  march  to  Washington. 

The  Northern  whites  outnumbered  Southern  whites  by 
three  to  one,  but  the  Southern  whites  had  their  negroes  to 
feed  them.  The  military  qualities  of  the  race  on  both 
sides  were  the  same,  or  rather  the  Northern  and  Western 
farmer,  when  brought  under  discipline,  was  superior  in 
steady  valour  to  the  "  poor  white  "  of  the  South,  though 
his  onset  was  not  so  furious  as  that  of  the  "  Louisiana 
Tigers,"  nor  his  yell  so  loud.  Both  sides  were  untrained 
to  war ;  but  the  rough  life  of  the  poor  white  had  been  the 
better  preparation  for  the  camp,  and  he  was  more  accus 
tomed  to  the  endurance  of  hardship,  as  well  as  a  rifleman 


254  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAP. 

well  fitted  for  forest  war,  and  he  marched  well.  The 
Southern  gentleman  was  a  horseman,  while  the  people  at 
the  North  used  not  the  saddle-horse  but  the  buggy.  Not 
that  cavalry  were  much  used  for  battle  in  this  war ;  the 
country  was  too  tangled  for  their  charges  and  even  for  their 
formation ;  they  were  used  chiefly  for  reconnaisaiices  and 
raids.  The  South  also  had  over  the  North  at  first  the 
advantage  which  the  Cavaliers  had  over  the  Roundheads ; 
the  gentry  were  accustomed  to  command,  and  the  common 
people  to  obey.  It  took  time  to  make  the  Northern  Demo 
crat  submit  to  discipline.  Lincoln,  when  he  went  out  with 
a  corps  against  the  Indians,  had  heard  the  first  word  of 
command  given  by  an  officer  to  a  private  answered  with  an 
oath.  Discipline,  however,  came  in  time  and  was  then 
combined  with  greater  intelligence.  In  intelligence  no 
army,  except  perhaps  the  Athenian,  can  have  ever  equalled 
or  approached  that  of  the  North.  Most  of  the  soldiers 
carried  books  and  writing  materials  in  their  knapsacks,  and 
mail  bags  heavily  weighted  with  letters  were  sent  from 
every  cantonment.  Such  privates  would  sometimes  reason 
instead  of  obeying,  and  they  would  see  errors  of  their  com 
manders  to  which  they  had  better  have  been  blind.  But 
on  the  whole,  in  a  war  in  which  much  was  thrown  upon  the 
individual  soldier,  intelligence  was  likely  to  prevail.  In 
wealth,  in  the  means  of  providing  the  weapons  and  ammu 
nitions  of  war,  the  North  had  an  immense  advantage,  which, 
combined  with  that  of  numbers,  could  not  fail,  if,  to  use 
Lincoln's  homely  phrase,  it  "  pegged  away,"  to  tell  in  the 
end.  It  was  also  vastly  superior  in  mechanical  invention, 
which  was  destined  to  play  a  great  part,  and  in  mechanical 
skill ;  almost  every  Yankee  regiment  Avas  full  of  mechanics, 
some  of  whom  could  devise  as  well  as  execute.  In  artillery 


y.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  255 

and  engineering  the  North  took  the  lead  from  the  first, 
having  many  civil  engineers,  whose  conversion  into  military 
civil  engineers  was  easy.     The  South,  to  begin  with,  had 
the  contents  of  Federal  arsenals  and  armouries,  which  had 
been  well  stocked  by  the  provident  treason  of  Buchanan's 
Minister  of  War.     The  Federal  navy  yard  at  Norfolk,  with 
twelve   ships,  also  fell  into  its  hands.     But  when  these 
resources  were  exhausted,  replacement  was   difficult,  the 
blockade    having   been  established,  though  extraordinary 
efforts  in  the  way  of  military  manufacture  were  made.    To 
the  wealthy  North,  besides  its  own  factories,  were  opened 
the  markets  of  England  and   the   world.     Of   the  small 
regular  army  the  Confederacy  had  carried  off  a  share,  with 
nearly  half  the  regular  officers.     The  South  had  the  advan 
tage  of  the  defensive,  which,  with  long-range  muskets  and 
in  a  difficult  country,  was  reckoned  in  battle  as  five  to  two. 
The  South  had  the  superiority  of  the  unity,  force,  and 
secrecy  which  autocracy  lends  to  the  operations  of  war. 
On  the  side  of  the  North  these  were  comparatively  want 
ing.     Party  divisions    continued,    the  war    being  openly 
opposed,  and    sympathy    with    secession    almost    openly 
avowed  by  the  Copperheads,  as  they  were  called,  from  a 
reptile  which  waits   on   the    rattlesnake,    the    rattlesnake 
being  emblematic  of  the  South.     The  North,  on  the  other 
hand,  had  the  advantage  of  the  unforced  efforts  and  sacri 
fice  which   free   patriotism   makes  ;  and,  as  the    struggle 
went  on,  power  was  spontaneously  entrusted  to  the  govern 
ment,  which  received  during  the  greater  part  of  the  con 
flict  the  hearty  and  almost  unquestioning  support  of    a 
majority  in  Congress  so  large  as  to  produce  practical  unity 
of  counsels.      Among  its  supporters    were  many  of   the 
Democratic  party,  who  under  the  name  of  War  Democrats 


256  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAJ  . 

followed  the  patriotic  example  of  Stephen  Douglas.  Tho 
evils  of  political  influence  were  felt  in  the  choice  of  gen 
erals  and  in  the  conduct  of  the  war,  but  perhaps  not  moro 
than  those  of  favouritism  on  the  other  side.  The  press, 
if  it  gave  trouble  to  the  government,  did  not,  like  tho 
slave  press  of  the  South,  mislead  the  people  by  publishing, 
at  the  bidding  of  the  war  office,  false  news  of  successes 
which  exalted  for  the  moment,  but  led  to  depression  when 
the  truth  was  known. 

At  the  North  the  supply  of  volunteers  was  at  first 
abundant  and  from  all  classes,  patriotic  enthusiasm  being 
general.  After  experience  of  the  grim  reality  volunteer 
ing  declined,  and  desertion,  if  the  Comte  de  Paris  may  bo 
trusted,  became  immense.  It  was  necessary  to  resort  to 
bounties,  which  led  to  bounty-jumping,  that  is  desertion 
and  re-enlistment  for  the  purpose  of  getting  the  bounty 
paid  over  again,  and  at  last  to  the  draft  with  the  paying 
of  substitutes,  in  whose  persons,  as  the  jesters  said,  a  man 
might  leave  his  bones  on  the  field  of  honour,  and  think  of  it 
with  patriotic  pride  as  he  sipped  his  wine  at  home.  Under 
the  bounty,  draft,  and  substitute  system  the  quality  of  the 
enlistments  could  not  fail  to  fall  off,  while  recruiting  agents 
would  pick  up  all  the  waifs,  native  or  foreign,  whom  they 
could  find.  But  the  bulk  of  the  army  to  the  end  was 
native,  though  it  included  many  Germans,  British,  and 
Irish,  who  had  been  naturalized,  or  who  had  settled  in  the 
United  States,  and  could  not  fairly  be  set  down  as  mer 
cenaries.  The  South,  almost  from  the  first,  resorted  to 
conscription,  ruthlessly  enforced  with  the  severest  penal 
ties  for  evasion  or  desertion,  from  which  Northern  demo 
cracy  shrank.  Guards  pressed  men  in  the  streets,  and 
conscripts  were  seen  going  to  Lee's  army  in  chains.  It 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  257 

was  complained  that  the  slave-owners  by  various  subter 
fuges  escaped  while  they  thrust  the  poor  under  fire. 

The  finance  of  the  South  in  like  manner  soon  became 
requisition  and  confiscation,  the  inconvertible  bank  bills 
which  it  issued  in  vast  volumes  having  speedily  lost  all 
value,  so  that  its  soldiers  waived  the  farce  of  being  paid 
in  them.  It  found  purchasers  for  its  bonds  among  its 
European  friends,  who  sacrificed  to  their  sympathy  with 
its  cause.  At  the  North  a  war  taxation,  heavy  and  search 
ing,  was  cheerfully  borne.  To  meet  further  demands 
bonds  were  issued,  and  an  immense  debt  was  contracted. 
The  North  also  unhappily  resorted  to  the  issue  of  an 
inconvertible  paper  currency  which  in  effect  was  a  forced 
loan,  raised  in  a  manner  which  impaired  the  faith  of  con 
tracts,  and  disturbed  industry  and  trade.  The  Supreme 
Court,  for  reasons  which  must  be  deemed  rather  political 
than  judicial,  afterwards  sanctioned  the  exercise  of  a  power 
not  given  to  the  Federal  Government  by  the  constitution, 
and  denied,  apparently  for  a  reason  universally  applica 
ble,  to  the  States.  A  depreciation  of  sixty  per  cent  was 
the  result. 

The  South  looked  for  help  from  England  where  it 
believed  that  cotton  was  king.  The  free-trade  argument, 
early  and  skilfully  urged,  prevailed  at  Liverpool  where 
cotton  indeed  was  king,  and  in  other  commercial  centres 
where  the  same  interest  prevailed.  Politically  Great 
Britain  was  divided  like  the  United  States  themselves. 
On  the  side  of  the  South  was  the  aristocratic  party,  which 
had  always  been  taught  to  believe  that  the  success  of  the 
American  Republic  would  be  its  doom.  The  journals 
of  that  party,  eminent  as  well  as  violent,  poured  the 
gall  of  insult  into  the  American  heart  in  the  hour  of 


258  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP 

peril  and  adversity  when  feelings  are  most  keen.  Ameri 
can  hatred  of  England,  and  the  former  attitude  of  the 
Washington  government,  had  left  their  sting.  For  the 
attitude  of  the  Washington  government  the  slave-owners, 
who  had  long  held  power,  were  chiefly  to  blame,  bu~ 
of  this  the  English  people  were  not  conscious.  English 
friends  of  the  Republic  not  a  few  deprecated  the  war, 
thinking  that  it  would  be  wiser  to  part  in  peace,  and  wen; 
unjustly  confounded  by  the  North  with  enemies.  Bu: 
as  soon  as  it  was  discovered,  that,  in  spite  of  the  disclaimers 
of  the  American  Congress  and  President,  the  struggle  was 
practically  one  between  freedom  and  slavery,  the  hearts 
of  the  mass  of  the  English  people  were  with  the  North. 
Nor  did  the  partisans  of  the  slave  power  in  the  British 
Parliament  ever  venture  on  a  serious  movement  in  its 
favour.  The  dearth  of  cotton,  though  severely  felt,  was 
borne.  The  government  throughout  observed  neutrality, 
refusing  to  recognize  the  Confederacy,  or  receive  its  ambas 
sadors,  even  when  victory  seemed  to  have  assured  to  it  a 
place  among  the  nations.  Steady  refusal  met  the  over 
tures  of  the  French  emperor  who,  always  striving  to  tread 
in  the  footsteps  of  the  first  Napoleon,  and  seeking  to  re 
establish  for  France  a  colonial  empire  in  America,  urged 
a  joint  intervention  which  when  the  fortunes  of  the  North 
were  low  could  scarcely  have  failed  to  have  been  decisive. 
For  a  moment  it  seemed  that  the  power  of  Great  Britain 
would,  in  her  own  despite,  be  thrown  into  the  Southern 
Nov.  scale  by  the  rash  act  of  the  American  Captain  Wilkes, 
'  who,  having  confused  his  mind  with  the  study  of  inter 
national  law,  took  the  Confederate  envoys,  Mason  and  Sli- 
dell,  out  of  a  British  ship.  The  act  being  at  first  approved 
by  the  American  Secretary  for  the  Navy,  and  applauded 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  259 

by  the  people,  the  British  demand  for  redress  was  peremp 
tory.  Perhaps  the  temper  of  Lord  Palmerston,  who  was 
given  to  bluster,  made  it  even  more  peremptory  than  was 
needful.  But  wisdom  prevailed  and  the  envoys  were 
given  up.  Among  the  British  people,  kinsmen  of  the 
Americans  and  speaking  the  same  language,  as  well  as 
connected  by  commerce,  the  war  was  a  home  question, 
and  the  excitement  was  intense.  By  the  other  nations  of 
Europe  far  less  interest  was  shown.  To  them  the  Ameri 
can  Republic  was  entirely  foreign ;  and  the  idea  that 
upon  its  success  or  failure  hung  the  fate  of  democracy  and 
of  human  progress  had  not  found  place  in  their  minds. 
Even  in  France,  while  the  government  was  scheming, 
the  people  were  almost  indifferent.  Russia,  while  with  the 
rest  of  the  powers  she  recognized  the  belligerency  of  the 
of  the  South,  assumed  a  politic  attitude  of  benevolent 
neutrality  towards  the  North.  The  spheres  of  Russia  and 
the  United  States  were  wide  apart,  the  difference  between 
the  governments  in  character  was  too  extreme  for  political 
jealousy ;  perhaps  even  as  extremes  they  met  and  at  that 
time  they  had  a  common  hatred. 

The  strategical  objects  at  which  Northern  invasion  aimed 
were  the  Mississippi,  by  regaining  the  mastery  of  which 
Louisiana,  Arkansas,  Texas,  and  whatever  the  South  had 
of  Missouri,  would  be  cut  off;  Chattanooga,  and  other 
positions  in  Tennessee,  which  commanded  the  lines  of  rail 
way  binding  the  Confederate  territory  together  from  east 
to  west,  together  with  the  entrance  into  the  heart  of  the 
confederation;  and  the  coast,  by  blockading  which  the 
South  was  to  be  debarred  from  the  sale  of  its  cotton,  on 
which  its  finance  depended,  and  from  receiving  supplies 
from  Europe.  The  political  object  was  Richmond,  in 


260  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP 

choosing  which  for  their  capital,  placed  as  it  was  on  the 
northern  edge  of  their  territory,  and  near  the  centre  of 
the  enemy's  force,  the  Confederates  had  propitiated  Vir 
ginia  at  the  expense  of  their  military  strength,  though 
they  no  doubt  hoped  that  Richmond  in  the  end  would  not 
be  a  border  city,  since  their  territory  would  in  the  end 
embrace  Missouri  and  Kentucky.  The  section  of  countrj 
between  the  two  capitals,  traversed  by  the  Potomac,  the 
Rappahannock,  Rapidan,  North  Anna,  and  Pamunkej 
Rivers,  thus  became  the  grand  scene  of  war.  Above  all. 
the  object  was  to  beat  and  destroy  the  armies  of  the  Soutl 
which  gathered  round  Richmond.  There  went  on  a  strug 
gle,  generally  of  the  guerrilla  kind,  for  Kentucky  and  Mis 
souri.  The  South  began  by  striking  at  Washington,  the  fall 
of  which,  though  not  a  military,  would  have  been  a  political, 
blow,  and  might  have  had  an  effect  upon  Europe.  From 
the  vast  fortress  in  which  it  was  beleaguered,  its  armies 
at  times  sallied  forth  to  grasp  the  border  States,  to 
sweep  off  supplies,  of  which  its  need  was  always  increas 
ing,  to  turn  opinion  at  the  North,  and  make  the  assailant 
loosen  his  hold.  Otherwise,  it  waged  only  a  defensive  war. 
"  On  to  Richmond  "  was  the  cry  of  the  North.  On,  in 
spite  of  military  warnings,  the  raw  militia  with  a  handful 
July  of  regulars  went.  At  the  stream  of  Bull  Run  they  met  the 
'  Confederates  under  Beauregard.  A  confused  engagement, 
the  counterpart  of  Edgehill,  ensued.  A  fresh  Confederate 
force,  coming  up  by  rail,  decided  the  day.  Obstruction  at 
a  bridge  turned  panic  flight  into  a  rout,  and  the  Confed 
erates,  had  they  pursued,  might  have  entered  Washington. 
But  the  victors  were  in  little  better  plight  than  the  van 
quished.  Aristocratic  journals  in  Europe  scoffed  and 
jeered.  Yet  the  list  of  killed  and  wounded  on  both  sides 


v.  RUPTURE   AND    RECONSTRUCTION.  261 

was  an  earnest  of  a  bloody  war,  and  in  the  midst  of  the 
panic  Connecticut  artisans  had  proved  the  pith  of  their 
order  by  the  steadiness  with  which  they  bore  off  their 
guns.  The  South  crowed  loudly,  but  the  North,  instead 
of  being  discouraged,  was  spurred  to  effort  and  measured 
its  task.  With  their  native  versatility,  the  American 
people  turned  from  the  works  of  peace  to  those  of  war, 
took  to  drilling  and  learning  to  ride,  to  the  manufacture 
of  cannon  and  rifles,  to  the  building  of  ships,  or  the  con 
version  of  merchantmen  and  ferryboats  into  vessels  of 
war,  to  the  organization  of  the  commissariat  and  trans 
port,  for  which  hotel-keeping  and  railway-managing  had 
well  fitted  them;  or  of  the  medical  department,  for 
the  service  of  which  steamboats  and  railway  carriages  were 
turned  into  field-hospitals.  Politicians  changed  the  sphere 
of  their  ambition  from  the  Senate  to  the  camp,  not  with 
much  success,  for  no  civilian  commander  attained  more 
than  a  secondary  reputation.  There  was  a  general  rush  to 
arms,  a  general  outpouring  of  patriotic  gifts  and  tender  of 
patriotic  services.  Congress  voted  men  and  money  with 
out  stint,  and  the  call  for  troops  was  promptly  answered 
by  the  States.  The  force  of  spontaneous  zeal  in  contrast 
to  the  iron  despotism  which  grasped  the  resources  of  the 
South  was  seen,  and  the  only  question  was  whether  it 
would  last. 

In  the  west,  the  Federals  had  gained  some  advantages 
by  which  the  public  eye  was  turned  on  General  McClellan, 
whom  national  fancy  now  exalted  into  a  young  Napoleon, 
and  called  to  the  command  of  the  army  with  the  amplest 
powers  and  the  most  lavish  supplies.  He  proved  to  be  an 
organizer  rather  than  a  general.  It  was  said  of  him  by  a 
railway  president,  who  had  employed  him  as  a  civil  engi- 


262  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

neer,  that  he  would  build  the  best  of  bridges,  but  would 
never  go  on  it  himself.  A  great  organizer  he  was.  He 
drilled  to  perfection  an  army  of  150,000  men,  yet  having 
drilled  it,  he  did  not  advance,  but  lay  in  his  camp  near 
Washington,  still  drilling  and  reviewing  while  weeks  of 
good  weather  went  by.  His  policy  seems  to  have  been  to 
create  an  overwhelming  force,  bind  the  Confederate  armies 
to  the  stake  at  Richmond,  destroy  them  there,  and  thus 
end  secession  at  a  blow,  perhaps  without  prejudice  to 
slavery,  to  which,  as  a  Democrat,  he  was  no  enemy.  In 
the  controversy  which  ensued  between  him  and  Lincoln, 
the  President  wrote  always  with  temper  and  forbearance, 
while  McClellan  was  sometimes  arrogant;  but  the  presump 
tion  is  against  a  civilian  who  meddles  with  war,  and  Lin 
coln's  excessive  fear  for  the  safety  of  the  capital  is  allowed 
to  have  led  him  into  dictating  at  least  one  false  move. 
That  he  felt  political  jealousy  of  McClellan  as  a  Democrat, 
or  a  possible  rival  for  the  Presidency,  is  not  to  be  believed, 
whatever  may  have  been  the  feelings  of  party  politicians 
April  around  him.  At  last  McClellan  moved  on  Richmond. 
"  He  saw  the  spires  of  the  Confederate  capital,  but  his 
movements  were  tentative  and  irresolute,  while  his  tone 
was  always  despondent.  After  a  series  of  blind  and 
bloody  engagements,  in  a  wooded  and  swampy  country,  he 
led  back  an  army  not  conquered,  though  severely  handled, 
in  the  field  arid  decimated  by  malaria  and  straggling  as 
well  as  by  the  bullet.  It  had  been  the  good  fortune  of 
the  Confederates  to  find  at  once  a  great  general  in  Robert 
E.  Lee,  a  Virginian  aristocrat,  and  an  officer  of  the  regular 
army,  who,  though  a  Unionist,  when  his  State  left  the 
Union  felt  bound  to  go  with  his  State.  He  had  been 
joined  by  Jackson,  nicknamed  from  his  steadfastness  on 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  263 

a  field  of  general  panic  Stonewall,  a  striking  figure,  a 
Calvinist  of  the  Scotch-Irish  breed,  deeply  religious,  a 
believer  in  the  destiny  of  the  children  of  Ham,  and  a 
soldier  of  extraordinary  energy,  valour,  daring,  and  ac 
tivity,  the  idol  of  his  men.  Lee  was  henceforth  the  head, 
Jackson  the  right  arm,  of  Confederate  war. 

McClellan  having  lost  the  confidence  of  his  government 
though  not  of  his  men  was  replaced  by  Pope  who  put 
forth  a  gasconading  manifesto,  was  outgeneralled  by  Lee 
and  Jackson,  and  defeated  in  a  great  battle.  Emboldened 
by  victory  the  Confederate  generals  sallied  into  Maryland 
in  the  hope  of  her  rising,  which  though  her  heart  was 
with  them  she  disappointed.  She  waited  for  the  guarantee 
of  victory,  perhaps  also  she  shrank  from  her  tattered  and 
squalid  deliverers.  A  secondary  object  of  the  movement 
was  'need  of  supplies.  No  armies  were  ever  so  lavishly 
supplied  as  those  of  the  North.  The  length  of  their 
Avaggon  trains  was  prodigious.  A  wealthy  democracy  is 
sure  to  care  well  for  all  its  citizens.  But  the  Southern 
soldiers  were  called  upon  to  endure  great  hardships.  We 
find  them  left  for  days  with  no  food  but  a  little  flour. 
We  find  them  ragged,  barefooted,  and  without  hats,  fain 
to  bind  old  hats  on  their  feet  for  shoes ;  we  find  them 
without  blankets,  and  piteous  appeals  are  made  by  their 
commanders  for  something  to  cover  the  defenders  of  the 
country  who  were  keeping  guard  amidst  sleet  and  snow. 
There  must  also  have  been  terrible  suffering  in  their  ill- 
provided  hospitals,  especially  when  the  stern  policy  of  war 
refused  to  let  medicines  pass.  Pay  they  had  none.  Few 
of  these  men  were  slave-owners,  and  they  were  fighting 
for  what  to  them  was  their  country.  Lee,  however,  suf 
fered  much  from  straggling. 


264  THE    UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

To  face  the  storm  which  threatened  Washington 
Sept.  McClellan  was  replaced  in  command.  On  the  Antietam 
'  he  met  Lee  with  superior  forces,  and  fought  a  bloody 
battle  which  though  indecisive  was  followed  by  the  retreat 
of  Lee.  Bloody  the  battle  was,  enough  to  satisfy  all 
critics  of  American  valour.  A  visitor  to  the  field  saw  the 
bodies  lying  in  swathes.  In  the  length  of  five  hundred 
feet  he  counted  two  hundred  dead.  A  lane  was  filled 
with  a  battalion  of  them.  The  field  where  he  stood  was 
black  with  corpses ;  he  was  told  that  the  field  beyond  was 
equally  crowded,  but  he  had  supped  as  full  of  horrors  as 
he  could  bear. 

Antietam,  though  a  drawn  battle,  was  for  a  momentous 
purpose  made  to  do  duty  as  a  victory.  Lincoln  had 
at  length  decided  to  strike  slavery,  which  by  this  time 
must  have  been  seen  to  be  the  great  enemy,  and  against 
which  in  fact  Congress  had  entered  the  national  verdict 
by  abolishing  it  in  the  District  of  Columbia.  He  had 
hesitated  long,  fearing  to  outrun  opinion,  his  constant 
guide,  his  index  of  that  "will  of  God,"  conformity  to 
which  he  always  made  his  aim,  and  to  estrange  the 
border  States.  Meantime  he  had  been  checking  his 
generals  of  both  parties,  enemies  of  slavery  who  set  the 
negroes  free  within  their  command,  and  friends  of  slavery 
who  gave  back  fugitive  slaves  to  their  owners.  A  shrewd 
move  had  been  made  towards  emancipation,  and  a  cue  had 
been  given  to  the  President  by  Benjamin  Butler,  a  sharp 
lawyer  turned  soldier,  who  pronounced  the  negro,  as  he 
helped  the  enemy  on  military  works,  contraband  of  war, 
and  confiscated  him  to  freedom.  But  now  the  President 
thought  that  the  hour  had  corne,  and  that  something  must 
be  done  to  put  new  life  into  the  cause.  He  waited  only 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  265 

for  a  victory  that  his  act  might  not  seem  one  of  despair. 
He  made  a  solemn  vow  before  God  that  if  General  Lee 
were  driven  back  from  Maryland,  he  would  set  the  slaves 
free.  After  Antietam  he  announced  his  intention  of  issu 
ing,  and  on  the  first  of  January,  1863,  he  issued,  a  memo 
rable  proclamation,  setting  free  by  his  military  authority 
all  the  slaves  in  rebel  States.  He  still  founded  his  action 
on  policy  and  the  constitution.  Later  on  his  moral  feel 
ings  found  free  utterance.  "If  we  shall  suppose  that 
American  slavery  is  one  of  those  offences  which,  in  the 
providence  of  God,  must  needs  come,  but  which,  having 
continued  through  His  appointed  time,  He  now  wills  to 
remove,  and  that  He  gives  to  both  North  and  South  this 
terrible  war,  as  the  woe  due  to  those  by  whom  the  offence 
came,  shall  we  discern  therein  any  departure  from  those 
divine  attributes  which  the  believers  in  a  living  God 
ascribe  to  Him  ?  Fondly  do  we  hope,  fervently  do  we 
pray,  that  this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may  speedily  pass 
away.  Yet  if  God  wills  that  it  continue  until  all  the 
wealth  piled  by  the  bondman's  two  hundred  and  fifty 
years  of  unrequited  toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until  every 
drop  of  blood  drawn  with  the  lash  shall  be  paid  by  another 
drawn  with  the  sword,  as  was  said  three  thousand  years 
ago,  so  still  it  must  be  said,  '  the  judgments  of  the  Lord 
are  true  and  righteous  altogether.' ' 

There  presently  followed  the  enlistment  of  negroes  as 
soldiers,  for  which  the  country  was  more  ready  as  its 
industry  was  losing  many  hands ;  and  the  black  54th 
Massachusetts,  under  its  devoted  white  colonel,  Shaw,  May 

"1  Q/3O 

marched  out  to  glory  through  the  streets  of  Boston  amidst 
great  demonstrations  of  public  sympathy.  There  was  a 
throb  of  race  feeling  by  which  the  negro  soldiers  were  at 


266  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

first  disrated.  This  was  overcome  ;  yet  it  cannot  be  said 
that  they  were  ever  received  by  their  white  fellow  soldiers, 
or  have  since  been  acknowledged,  as  brethren  in  arms. 
They  fought  not  ill,  being  docile,  though  not  dashing ; 
but  the  half  of  manhood  which,  Homer  says,  slavery  take.s 
from  a  man  cannot  be  restored  by  merely  putting  on  him 
the  cap  of  liberty.  By  the  sight  of  negro  soldiers  the  evil 
passion  of  the  slave-owner  was  fearfully  aroused.  At  the 
April  taking  of  Fort  Pillow  by  the  Confederates,  the  negroes  of 
'  the  garrison  were  shot  down  after  surrender,  some  were 
nailed  to  logs  and  burned,  some  were  buried  alive,  and 
even  whites  taken  with  the  negroes  shared  the  same  fate. 
The  evidence  for  this  seems  conclusive.  Why  should  wo 
reject  it  when  at  this  day  negroes  in  the  South  are  being 
burned  alive  ? 

The  slaves  never  rose.  They  continued  to  till  the  soil, 
supplied  their  masters  with  food,  and  faithfully  took  care 
of  the  planter's  wife  and  daughters.  The  slave-owners 
are  entitled  to  the  benefit  of  this  fact.  But  the  negroes 
were  children  of  habit,  and  ill-informed  of  events.  The 
proclamation  of  freedom  would  scarcely  reach  their  ears. 
They  welcomed  the  Northern  armies,  gave  them  all  the 
information  in  their  power,  and,  it  was  said,  never  de 
ceived  them. 

The  tide,  however,  had  not  yet  turned.  McClellari 
received  orders  from  Washington  to  follow  Lee.  He 
stood  still,  was  removed  from  command,  and  replaced  by 
Burnside,  a  brave  and  loyal  but  hapless  officer,  in  the 
selection  of  whom  Lincoln's  judgment  strangely  failed 
him.  Burnside  sent  his  troops  to  storm  a  strong  position 
Dec.  in  which  Lee  had  entrenched  himself  on  the  heights  of 

1*) 

Fredericksburg    between    Washington     and     Richmond. 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  267 

The  issue  was  a  ruinous  defeat  followed  by  still  more 
ruinous  demoralization.  Irregularity  of  pay  conspired 
with  the  influence  of  defeat.  More  than  80,000  soldiers 
and  nearly  3000  officers  were  absent  from  the  standards, 
and  more  than  one-half  of  them  without  regular  leave.  The 
service  of  the  outposts  was  neglected;  the  bonds  of  dis 
cipline  were  being  loosened.  "  Gloom,  home-sickness,  and 
a  disposition  to  criticise,"  says  the  Comte  de  Paris,  "  were 
becoming  daily  more  prevalent  among  that  large  body  of 
troops,  lying  torpid  amid  the  mire  and  rime  in  the  clayish 
slopes  of  Stafford  County."  Deserters  were  aided  by  their 
relatives,  who  sent  them  citizens'  clothes.  The  keener 
the  soldier's  perception  of  the  incompetence  of  his  gen 
erals,  the  greater  was  his  discouragement  under  defeat. 
Burnside  lost  control  over  his  lieutenants ;  he  demanded  a 
holocaust  of  insubordinates;  but  the  government  preferred 
to  remove  him,  and  Hooker,  called  Fighting  Joe,  took  his  jan. 

1  ftAQ 

place.  Hooker  formed  a  dashing  and,  it  appears,  a  good 
plan  for  throwing  himself  across  the  Rappahannock,  cut 
ting  off  Lee  from  Richmond,  and  overwhelming  him.  But 
in  the  execution  his  nerve  or  his  head  failed  him.  He 
stopped  short,  and  instead  of  attacking  allowed  himself 
to  be  thrown  on  the  defensive,  and  was  out-generalled  by 
Lee,  who  daringly  presumed  on  his  irresolution.  Stone 
wall  Jackson,  after  prayer  in  his  tent,  made  a  bold  move 
ment  through  the  woods,  which  brought  him  on  Hooker's  May 
flank,  and  by  a  sudden  attack  rolled  up  a  division  of  the 
Federal  army.  Hooker,  who  had  proclaimed  to  his  sol 
diers  that  they  had  got  Lee  where  he  must  fly  or  be 
destroyed,  fell  back  across  the  Rappahannock,  covering 
his  disgrace  with  a  bombastic  order  of  the  day.  This  was 
the  nadir  of  Federal  fortunes.  The  friends  of  the  North 


268  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

in  Europe  desponded,  and  Confederate  bonds  sold  well. 
Yet  the  Confederates  had  bought  their  victory  dear,  sine  e 
it  cost  them  Stonewall  Jackson,  who  was  killed  by  the  fire 
of  his  own  men. 

On  the  board  between  Washington  and  Richmond 
the  eyes  of  the  world  were  fixed,  and  by  the  turns  of  tl  e 
balance  on  it  the  chances  011  it  of  the  combatants  were 
measured.  But  in  the  western  and  central  zones  fortui  e 
had  been  far  more  favourable  to  the  North.  There  fought 
the  western  husbandmen,  never  so  perfectly  drilled  as  tl  e 
army  of  the  east,  but  strong,  brave,  hardy,  and  heartily 
loyal  to  the  cause ;  for  the  notion  that  the  West  was 
hanging  back  and  was  being  dragged  on  b}^  the  East, 
though  prevalent  in  Europe,  was  wholly  untrue ;  the  san  e 
spirit  pervaded  all  the  States  which  had  remained  in  tl  e 
Union,  extending  without  abatement  even  to  far-distant 
California.  In  the  West  appeared  Ulysses  Grant,  a  sledge 
hammer  of  war,  a  man  of  unconquerable  resolution,  and 
unsparing  of  blood  enough  to  fight  on  the  principle  that 
the  North  would  gain  by  the  sacrifice  of  two  men  for  OIK;. 
Feb.  The  capture  by  Grant  (5f  Fort  Donelson  on  the  Cumber- 
'  land  River,  the  great  bastion  of  Confederate  defence  in 
the  west,  with  a  large  garrison,  was  the  first  bright  gleam 
of  Federal  victory ;  it,  at  the  same  time,  revealed  the 
commander  whose  tenacity  had  snatched  success  out  of 
the  jaws  of  defeat.  Another  general,  the  most  skilful 
of  Northern  strategists,  Sherman,  destined  at  last  to  deal 
the  death  blow,  also  showed  himself  on  that  scene.  Again 
the  Federal  army  of  the  West  conquered,  though  after 
narrowly  escaping  destruction,  at  Pittsburgh  Landing  on 

April  the  Tennessee  River,  in  a  battle,  perhaps  the   most   des- 
1862 

'  perate  of  the  war,  named  from  the  old  church  of  Shiloh, 


T.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  269 

round  which  for  two  days  it  raged.  Grant  and  Sherman, 
with  part  of  the  Federal  army,  lay  carelessly  encamped  on 
the  river  bank  waiting  for  the  rest  under  Buell  to  come 
up.  In  the  dusk  of  dawn  a  Confederate  army,  which 
had  stolen  upon  them  by  forced  marches,  awakened  their 
sleeping  camp  with  the  yells  cf  Southern  onset.  A  day 
of  most  murderous  bush  fighting  ensued.  The  Federals 
were  overpowered  and  swept  out  of  their  camps ;  the 
river  bank  was  crowded  with  their  flying  soldiers.  Noth 
ing  saved  them  from  utter  defeat  but  the  rugged  and 
wooded  character  of  the  ground,  and  the  hunger  which 
made  thousands  of  the  enemy  break  their  lines  to  pil 
lage  the  camp.  But  the  Confederates  were  exhausted; 
their  leader  fell.  Buell  having  come  up,  they  were  over 
powered  by  numbers  and  compelled  to  retire.  An  eye 
witness  of  the  retreat  says  that  in  a  ride  of  twelve  miles 
he  saw  more  of  human  agony  than  he  trusted  he  should 
ever  again  be  called  to  witness.  Along  a  narrow  and 
almost  impassable  road  wound  a  long  line  of  waggons 
loaded  with  wounded,  groaning  and  cursing,  and  piled  in 
like  bags  of  grain,  while  the  mules  plunged  on  in  mud  and 
water  belly  deep,  the  water  sometimes  coming  into  the 
waggons.  Next  came  a  straggling  regiment  of  infantry, 
pressing  on  past  the  train.  "  Then  were  seen  soldiers 
with  arms  broken  and  hanging  down,  or  ofher  wounds. 
At  night-fall  a  cold  drizzling  rain  set  in,  which  turned  to 
pitiless  hail,  from  which  the  wounded  and  dying  had  not 
a  blanket  to  shield  them.  Three  hundred  men  died  in 
the  retreat,  and  their  bodies  were  thrown  out  to  make 
room  for  others,  who  though  wounded  had  struggled  on, 
hoping  to  find  shelter,  rest,  and  medical  care. 

One  after  another  the  forts  of  the  South  on  the  Missis- 


270  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

sippi  fell,  and  the  Confederacy  thus  lost  its  western  terri 
tory,  which  though  it  sent  not  many  men,  sent  large 
supplies  of  cattle.  To  complete  the  opening  of  the  great 
water-way,  the  capture  of  Vicksburg,  the  Confederate 
Gibraltar,  alone  remained.  The  work  to  that  point  was 
done  from  above  by  flotillas  in  concert  with  the  Federal 
army  of  Grant  and  Sherman.  From  below  it  was  done  by 
Farragut,  the  Nelson,  or  rather  as  his  chief  exploits  were 
attacks  of  forts  by  ships,  the  Blake  of  the  American  navy. 
A  sailor  of  the  old  school,  Farragut,  fought  in  wooden 
ships,  and  when  desired  to  shift  his  flag  to  an  ironclad, 
replied  that  he  did  not  want  to  go  to  hell  in  a  tea-kettle. 
With  extraordinary  daring  he  ran,  with  his  wooden  fleet, 
the  gauntlet  of  the  forts  of  New  Orleans  amidst  a  "  hell " 
of  fire-ships,  and  in  the  face  of  a  formidable  steam-ram, 
still  delivering  his  broadsides  when  the  fire  was  high  up 

April  the  mast  of  his  ship,  and  captured  the   great  commercial 
1862 

'  city  of  the  Soutli  together  with  the  southern  entrance  to 

the  Mississippi.  The  prize  and  the  blow  were  immense. 
Benjamin  Butler,  the  lawyer  soldier,  became  commandant. 
He  played  the  sedile  also,  gave  the  city  a  strong  police, 
cleansed  it,  and  saved  it  for  that  season  from  yellow  fever. 
A  coarse  proclamation,  which  he  put  forth  against  women 
who  insulted  his  soldiers  in  the  streets,  being  misread  or 
misrepresented,  raised  a  storm  of  indignation  on  both  sides 
of  the  Atlantic.  But  if  the  temper  of  the  male  slave 
owner  was  fiery,  that  of  his  help-mate  was  not  less  so,  and 
Butler's  proclamation  might  have  been  necessary,  though 
its  coarseness  was  not.  A  worse  charge  was  that  of 
connivance  at  illicit  dealings,  particularly  in  cotton,  by 
which,  if  the  commandant  himself  did  not  gain,  there  was 
reason  to  believe  that  those  about  him  did. 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  271 

In  the  central  zone,  where  the  Federals  sought  to  reach 
the  heart  of  the  Confederate  territory  through  middle  and 
eastern  Tennessee,  there  was  hard  fighting  without  deci 
sive  result.  A  typical  battle  was  that  fought  at  Christ 
mas,  1862,  in  the  cedar  brakes  of  Murfreesborough  between 
the  Federals  under  Rosecrans  and  the  Confederates  under 
Bragg.  The  two  armies  were  nearly  balanced  in  numbers, 
equipment,  discipline,  and  experience.  The  two  generals 
had  formed  the  same  plan  of  attack  each  upon  the  other, 
and  moved  against  each  other  at  the  same  time.  Each 
was  foiled  by  the  other's  movement.  The  evergreen  cedar 
thickets  prevented  a  general's  eye  from  ranging  over 
the  field.  For  three  days,  with  breaks  for  rectification  of 
position,  reorganization,  and  refreshment  of  men  and  ani 
mals,  the  eighty  thousand  combatants  struggled  for  the 
barren  honours  of  a  field  in  different  parts  of  which  each 
lost  and  won.  The  carnage  was  great.  The  killed  and 
wounded  were  thirty  per  cent  of  the  numbers  engaged, 
and  dreadful  were  the  sufferings  of  the  wounded  through 
the  cold  winter  nights.  In  the  end  the  Confederate  gen 
eral  withdrew  to  a  better  position.  There  followed  a 
pause  of  eight  months,  after  which  the  armies  grappled 
on  another  indecisive  field  of  slaughter,  both  generals 
being  swept  away  by  routed  portions  of  their  own  forces. 

In  reading  the  history  of  this  war,  the  tangled  character  of 
the  country  must  always  be  borne  in  mind ;  it  made  the  hand 
ling  of  troops  difficult,  disconcerted  plans,  and  rendered 
battles  indecisive,  since  the  vanquished  withdrew  into  the 
woods,  and  there  could  be  no  charges  of  cavalry  to  gather 
the  fruits  of  victory.  The  horse  were,  in  fact,  as  a  rule, 
not  cavalry,  but  mounted  rifles.  General  Meade,  who  had 
gone  through  the  whole  war,  said  he  had  only  twice  seen 


272  THE   UNITED    STATES.  CHAI  . 

a  large  mass  of  the  enemy.  Battles  were  vast  bush-fights, 
and  a  large  proportion  of  the  wounds  were  in  the  head 
and  shoulders,  which  in  taking  aim  protruded  from  behind 
the  tree. 

On  the  coast,  the  Federals  were  successful  in  their  ope 
rations.  With  marvellous  energy  and  ingenuity  in  adap 
tation,  they  had  improvised  a  navy  sufficient  to  blockado 
three  thousand  miles  of  coast  much  indented  and  masked 
with  islands.  The  Confederates  had  the  ships  taken  with 
the  Federal  Navy  Yard  at  Norfolk.  One  of  these,  tho 
Merrimack,  they  turned  into  an  ironclad.  Sallying  forth, 
she  sank  the  unarmoured  ships  opposed  to  her,  and  seemed 
likely  to  sweep  the  waters  and  break  the  blockade.  But 
in  mid-career  of  devastation  she  was  met  by  the  Mon- 
March/for,  the  turret-ship  of  Ericsson,  who  had  with  difficult1" 

1 862 

'  persuaded  the  government  to  make  trial  of  his  invention. 
The  Monitor  conquered.  The  ironclad  monster  limped 
back  to  her  lair,  and  in  a  moment  the  navies  of  the  world 
were  disrated,  and  naval  tactics  were  changed.  Blockade- 
running  went  on  with  ships  low-built  and  painted  grey  to 
elude  the  Federal  cruisers.  Some  cotton,  precious  in  the 
dearth,  was  run  out,  and  some  munitions  of  war  were  run 
in.  But  these  were  driblets  of  relief  to  the  South.  More 
effectual,  though  somewhat  piratical,  was  the  enterprise 
of  a  few  cruisers,  which  the  Confederates,  partly  by  viola 
tions  of  British  neutrality,  had  contrived  to  launch,  and 
which  cut  up  Federal  commerce.  Notable  above  all  for 
her  ravages  was  the  Alabama,  commanded  by  the  daring 
Semmes,  who  displayed  a  collection  of  the  chronometers 
of  the  Federal  vessels  which  he  had  captured,  and,  having 
no  port  into  which  to  take  them  for  condemnation  as 
prizes,  had  burned  at  sea,  in  contravention  of  the  law  of 


v.  RUPTURE  AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  273 

nations  as  was  loudly  protested  on  the  other  side.  Two 
steam  rams  were  being  built  for  the  Confederates  at  Liver 
pool,  but  an  embargo  was  laid  on  them  by  the  British 
government. 

The  stress  of  calamity  and  danger  in  the  West,  the  need 
of  supplies,  and  the  hope  of  producing  a  political  effect, 
by  shaking  Federal  resolution  and  impressing  Europe, 
probably  all  combined  in  determining  Lee,  after  his 
magnificent  success  at  Chancellorsville,  once  more  to 
assume  the  offensive.  He  entered  Pennsylvania  with  his 
seventy-five  thousand  victorious  veterans,  but  now  with  no 
Stonewall  Jackson.  Amid  the  rich  farms  he  refreshed 
his  hungry  troops,  while  he  threatened  Baltimore,  Phila 
delphia,  and  Washington.  But  no  political  effect  was  pro 
duced,  unless  it  were  at  New  York,  where  the  Irish  rose 
against  the  draft  and  the  negro,  maltreated  and  mur 
dered  negroes  with  their  usual  fury,  wrecked  property, 
and  filled  the  city,  then  destitute  of  defenders,  with  riot 
and  panic  till  the  arrival  of  troops,  when  the  insurrection 
was  at  once  quenched  in  the  blood  of  a  thousand  of  the 
insurgents.  Hooker,  counter-manoeuvring  Lee,  it  seems 
with  skill,  was  nevertheless  removed  from  command,  and 
replaced  by  Meade,  a  trustworthy,  though  not  a  great 
commander.  With  an  army  superior  in  numbers,  but  in 
ferior  in  spirit  and  confidence,  Meade  approached  his 
enemy.  At  Gettysburg,  in  a  rolling  district,  the  two 
moving  hosts  were  brought  into  collision.  During  two  July 

-I  Q«o 

days  of  detached  encounters  among  the  ridges,  in  one  of 
which  there  was  a  charge  of  cavalry  and  the  sabre  was 
used,  the  advantage  rested  with  the  Confederates.  On  the 
third  and  decisive  day,  the  Federal  army  was  concentrated 
in  a  good  defensive  position  on  the  Cemetery  Hill  of 


274  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

July  Gettysburg,  while  the  army  of  Lee  confronted  it  in  cres- 
1863.  cent  shape  along  a  semi-circle  of  wooded  slopes.  After  a 
furious  but  ineffective  cannonade,  which  exhausted  the 
Confederate  ammunition,  Lee,  against  the  advice  of  Long- 
street,  the  most  renowned  of  his  lieutenants,  launched  his 
infantry  in  column  across  an  open  space  of  three-quarters 
of  a  mile  against  an  army  strongly  posted,  and  with  a 
powerful  artillery,  which  after  a  deceptive  lull  again 
opened  its  full  fire.  The  column,  though  its  veteran 
valour  carried  it  up  to  and  into  the  Federal  lines,  was 
destroyed  after  a  struggle  more  intense  than  that  with  the 
Old  Guard  at  Waterloo,  and  when  its  remnants  drifted 
back  in  disarray,  Lee  must  have  felt  that  the  Confederate 
cause  was  lost.  Defeated,  but  still  terrible,  he  was  allowed 
to  fall  back  into  Virginia  unmolested,  and  to  carry  off  the 
booty  which  he  had  swept  from  Pennsylvanian  fields.  He 
even  in  a  defensive  position  again  offered  battle,  which 
Meade  was  too  prudent,  the  exulting  North  thought  too 
timid,  to  accept. 

July  On  the  day  after  Gettysburg,  Vicksburg,  the  last  and 
1863.  most  redoubtable  stronghold  of  the  Confederates  on  the 
Mississippi,  fell,  after  a  long  siege  and  much  outpouring 
of  Federal  blood,  before  the  indomitable  energy  of  Grant, 
which  afterwards  turned  the  wavering  balance  decisively 
in  favour  of  the  Federals  on  the  battle  ground  of  middle 
Tennessee.  When  the  next  campaign  opened  the  re 
sources  of  the  South  were  running  low.  She  had  begun 
to  think  of  enlisting  negroes,  thus  setting  the  house  on 
fire  to  save  it.  Her  conscription  had  drawn  her  last  able- 
bodied  man ;  it  had  come  to  the  old  men  and  the  boys, 
robbing,  as  Grant  said,  the  cradle  and  the  grave.  Her 
railroads  were  worn  out;  the  sea  was  inexorably  closed 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  275 

to  her;  her  paper  money  had  lost  all  value.  There 
remained  to  her  only  the  army  of  Lee,  Lee  himself,  and 
another  army  commanded  by  Joseph  Johnston,  which  lay 
between  the  invader's  force,  gathering  for  attack  in  Ten 
nessee,  and  Atlanta  in  Georgia,  the  great  Confederate 
place  of  arms.  Now,  too,  Federal  operations,  which 
hitherto  had  lacked  unity,  the  armies  moving,  as  Grant 
said,  like  a  team  of  balky  horses  without  reference  to 
each  other,  and  had  been  marred  by  political  interference, 
were  combined  under  Grant,  who,  placed  in  supreme  com-  Mar. 
mand  with  the  title  of  Lieutenant-General,  grasped  the  ] 
whole  war  in  his  single  hand,  thrust  political  meddling 
aside,  formed  his  own  plans,  kept  his  own  counsels,  and 
proceeded  unsparingly  to  apply  his  principle  of  attrition, 
wearing  down  by  incessant  battle  what  remained  of  the 
Southern  force. 

The  plan  was  that  Grant  should  move  on  Richmond,  or 
rather  on  Lee  who  covered  it,  taking  Richmond  if  he 
could;  at  all  events,  holding  Lee  there  and  exhausting 
him,  while  Sherman  from  Chattanooga  moved  on  Atlanta, 
piercing  the  Confederacy  to  the  heart.  Grant  crossed  the 
Rappahannock  with  an  army  greatly  superior  in  number 
to  that  of  his  enemy,  though  reduced  in  quality  by 
the  substitution  of  the  draft  for  volunteering.  In  the 
Wilderness,  a  gloomy  tract  covered  with  a  dense  growth 
of  scraggy  pine,  scrub  oak,  dwarf  chestnut,  and  hazel,  a 
tract  where  the  general  could  not  see  the  length  of  a  May, 

1  QA*-1 

brigade,  was  fought  during  two  days  the  first  battle  of 
a  series,  all  equally  blind  and  bloody,  which  is  stated  to 
have  cost  Grant  on  the  whole  64,000  men,  while  the 
loss  of  his  opponent  also  was  heavy  and  could  not,  like 
Grant's,  be  repaired.  If  carnage  can  ennoble  war,  war  was 


276  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

ennobled  here.  From  dawn  to  dusk,  we  are  told,  the  roar 
of  the  guns  was  ceaseless.  A  tempest  of  shells  shrieked 
through  the  forest  and  ploughed  the  fields.  When  night 
came,  in  the  angle  of  the  works  where  the  fire  had  been 
hottest,  men  in  hundreds  killed  and  wounded  were  piled 
in  heaps,  some  bodies  that  had  lain  for  hours  under  the 
concentric  fire  being  perforated  with  wounds,  while  the 
masses  of  slaughter  were  at  times  moved  by  the  writhing 
of  the  wounded.  At  the  battle  of  the  Wilderness  the 
woods  caught  fire  and  the  wounded  were  burned.  Bul 
lets  came  in  such  a  stream  that  a  tree  eighteen  inches 
in  diameter  was  cut  in  two  by  them.  It  is  wonderful  that 
humanity  should  not  be  extinguished  on  such  scenes; 
that,  on  the  contrary,  brave  soldiers  should  be  generally 
humane. 

So  dense  was  the  wood  that  when  abatis  were  being 
made  on  both  sides  only  two  hundred  yards  apart,  while 
the  ringing  of  the  axe  could  be  heard,  neither  side  could 
see  a  man  of  the  other.  In  this  war,  fighting  always  in 
woods,  or  broken  ground,  the  men  learned  not  only  to  seek 
cover  but  to  make  it.  Whenever  they  were  in  position 
they  threw  up  earthworks.  With  their  wood-craft  they 
easily  constructed  abatis,  and  battles  were  fought  with 
the  axe  and  trenching  tool  as  well  as  with  the  musket. 

Lee,  while  vastly  outnumbered,  had  the  advantages  of 
perfect  knowledge  of  the  country,  of  the  defensive,  and  of 
the  interior  line.  With  these,  and  his  superior  general 
ship,  he  held  his  own,  presenting  everywhere  a  front 
strengthened  by  works  to  his  pertinacious  foe.  At  Cold 
Harbour,  where  in  the  course  of  their  wrestle  the  comba 
tants  were  brought  close  to  Richmond,  Grant  delivered  a 
desperate  assault  upon  Lee's  defences,  which  was  repulsed 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  277 

in  half  an  hour  with  the  loss  of  7000  men.  After  the 
battle  of  the  Wilderness,  he  had  proclaimed  his  intention 
of  "fighting  it  out  on  that  line,  if  it  took  all  summer." 
But  he  found  himself  baffled  everywhere  by  the  moving 
rampart.  Trying  to  turn  that  which  he  was  unable  to 
pierce,  he  worked  round  to  Petersburg  on  the  south  of 
Richmond,  before  which,  after  an  unsuccessful  assault,  he 
was  set  fast,  and  had  to  resign  himself  to  a  regular  invest 
ment.  By  this  movement  he  uncovered  Washington,  the 
constant  object  of  Lincoln's  excessive  solicitude,  showing 
thereby  that  the  control  of  the  war  had  really  passed  from 
the  White  House  to  the  camp.  Upon  Washington  the 
Confederate  general,  Early,  swooped  from  the  Shenandoah 
Valley,  filling  the  city  with  alarm.  To  close  that  sally 
port,  and  punish  the  zeal  of  the  people  of  the  Shenandoah, 
the  rich  and  smiling  valley  was  ravaged  by  Sheridan  "  so 
that  a  crow  flying  down  it  would  have  to  carry  his  own 
rations."  Two  thousand  barns  filled  with  wheat  and  hay 
and  farming  implements,  and  seventy  mills  filled  with 
flour  and  wheat,  were  among  the  things  destroyed. 
Sheridan,  the  hardest  of  hitters,  having  run  a  swift  career 
of  victory,  had  nobler  achievements  to  record. 

When  it  is  asked,  of  what  use  was  all  this  slaughter  in 
the  Wilderness,  the  answer  sometimes  given  is,  that  public 
opinion  called  for  action.  Grant,  however,  had  applied 
with  effect  his  strategy  of  attrition.  Lee's  army  had  been 
worn  down.  It  had  also  been  held  fast  while  the  other  part 
of  the  plan  of  campaign  was  being  executed  by  Sherman. 
Advancing  from  Chattanooga,  Sherman  pushed  before 
him,  by  manoeuvres,  the  Confederate  army  under  John 
ston,  a  first-rate  strategist,  who,  with  far  inferior  forces, 
played  the  game  of  chess  with  stubbornness  and  skill, 


278  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

maintaining  himself  in  successive  positions,  and  when  he 
was  attacked  in  one  of  them,  gaining  a  victory.  In  the 
campaign  of  Sherman  were  most  fully  displayed  the  military 
mechanics  in  which  this  war,  made  by  the  most  mechanical 
of  nations,  and  by  armies  fuller  than  other  armies  ever 
were  of  skilled  workmen,  transcended  every  other  war. 
Sherman  bears  his  testimony  to  the  management  of  the 
railroads.  "  No  matter  when  or  where  a  breach  has  been 
made,  the  repair  train  seemed  on  the  spot,  and  the  damage 
was  repaired  generally  before  I  knew  of  the  break. 
Bridges  have  been  built  with  surprising  rapidity,  and 
the  locomotive  whistle  was  heard  in  an  advanced  camp 
almost  before  the  echoes  of  the  skirmish-fire  had  ceased. 
Some  of  the  bridges,  those  of  the  Oostanaula,  the  Etowah, 
and  Chattahoochee,  are  fine,  substantial  structures,  and 
were  built  in  an  inconceivably  short  time,  almost  out  of 
material  improvised  on  the  spot."  The  trestle  bridge 
across  the  Chattahoochee  River  near  Atlanta  was  780  feet 
in  length,  and  90  feet  in  height,  and  Avas  reconstructed  in 
four  and  a  half  days.  The  Potomac  Creek  bridge,  414 
feet  long  and  82  feet  high,  was  repaired  in  forty  hours. 
The  Aquia  Creek  Railroad  on  the  Potomac,  thirteen  miles 
in  length,  was  opened  in  five  days  after  the  order  to  begin 
the  work  was  given.  The  Federal  hosts  were  acting  in  a 
country  where  war  would  not  support  war,  and  could  not 
have  moved  without  railroads  to  supply  them.  The  tele 
graph  marched  everywhere  with  the  armies,  and  must,  on 
the  whole,  have  greatly  aided  operations,  though  it  might 
sometimes  have  been  the  instrument  of  unwise  interfer 
ence  with  commanders.  In  the  waggon  trains,  and  in  every 
mechanical  department,  American  ingenuity  introduced 
improvements  which  the  skilled  mechanics  in  the  ranks 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  279 

knew  how  to  use  and  repair.  Wonderful  feats  of  trans 
portation  were  performed.  An  army  corps  was  transported 
fourteen  hundred  miles,  equally  divided  between  land  and 
water,  in  eleven  days  along  rivers  obstructed  by  snow  and 
ice  and  over  mountains  amidst  violent  snow  storms  with 
out  the  least  loss.  A  division,  including  a  brigade  of 
artillery,  and  comprising  17,314  men,  1038  horses,  2371 
mules,  351  waggons,  and  83  ambulances,  was  embarked  on 
the  Tennessee  and  sent  to  New  Orleans,  1330  miles  in 
thirteen  days.  Thus  it  was  that  Sherman's  movement 
was  rendered  possible. 

When   Johnston,    retreating,  and   Sherman,   following, 
approached   Atlanta,   the    Confederate    President,  never, 
like  Lincoln,  master  of  himself,  lost  patience,  and  from 
the  wary  Johnston  transferred  the  command  to  the  im 
petuous  Hood.     Hood  at  once  fought  a  battle  in  which    Nov. 
he  was  defeated.     Atlanta  fell  and  was  made  desolate, 
all    its    store-houses,    de*p6t-buildings,    and    factories    of 
arms  going  up  together  in  a  vast  flame.     Sherman,  now 
disembarrassed,  could  venture  to  leave  his  base,  and  with 
safe  temerity  march  through    Georgia,    foraging   on   the 
country,    and    destroying   as    he   went    everything    that 
could    serve    the    purposes   of    war.     The    rich   city   of  Dec. 
Savannah,  with  its  forts  and  stores  and  its  facilities  for 
blockade-running,  surrendered  to  him.     The   defences  of 
Mobile,  the  military  port  of  the  Confederates,  had  been   Aug. 
forced  and  the  flotilla,  which  they  protected,  had  been 
destroyed  by  the  valour  of  Farragut.     Charleston  surren-  peb. 
dered  without  a  blow,  fired,  in  destroying  the  stores,  by  the   1  *65' 
retreating  army  of  the  Confederates,  and  Garrison  stood  tri 
umphant  beside  the  great  marble  slab  of  Calhoun.     Mean 
time,  Hood,  with  what  remained  of  his  army,  attempting  to 


280  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

Dec.  strike   northwards,  had  been  annihilated  at  Nashville  by 
'  Thomas.     The  Confederacy,  now  become  a  hollow  shell, 
collapsed  on  every  side. 

Lee  at  last,  overwhelming  forces  gathering  round  him, 
was  compelled  to  fly.  One  Sunday  the  Confederate 
President,  sitting  in  church,  where  he  was  a  regular 
attendant,  received  a  dispatch  which  caused  him  to  turn 
pale,  rise,  and  depart.  It  was  from  Lee,  saying  that 

April,  Richmond  must  be  evacuated.    The  evacuation  was  a  scene 

°'  of   the  widest   disorder    and   woe,  fire  being   set   to   the 

military  stores  and  spreading  to  the  city.     Lee  was  soon 

overtaken  in  his  retreat,  overpowered,  and  compelled  to 

April  surrender  to  Grant.  At  Appomattox  Court  House  was 
:5  enacted  the  closing  scene.  The  victor  behaved  with 
generosity  to  the  vanquished,  paroled  their  army,  and 
bade  the  privates  of  the  cavalry  as  well  as  the  officers 
take  away  their  horses,  saying  that  they  might  need  them 
for  the  spring  ploughing  and  other  farm  work.  His  good 
nature  was  the  earnest  of  a  reconciliation,  which  after  a 
conflict  so  desperate  seemed  to  the  world  to  be  hopeless. 
"  Men !  we  have  fought  through  this  war  together ;  I 
have  done  the  best  I  could  for  you,"  was  Lee's  parting 
address  to  his  army ;  it  might  have  served  for  Hannibal, 
as  well  as  for  Lee. 


The  last  victim  was  Lincoln.  He  had  been  re-elected 
President,  and  by  an  overwhelming  majority.  General 
McClellan  was  the  Democratic,  and  the  only  other  candi 
date,  for  Fremont  who  had  been  nominated  by  the  radicals 
was  withdrawn.  A  plank  in  the  Democratic  platform 
denounced  the  war  as  a  failure,  but  was  belied  by  victory, 
and  repudiated  by  McClellan.  Greater  effect  was  prob- 


v.  RUPTURE    AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  281 

ably  produced  by  the  denunciation  of  arbitrary  arrests, 
and  other  strong  measures,  to  which  the  government  had 
deemed  it  necessary  to  resort,  and  which  offended  the 
American  sense  of  personal  liberty.  Party,  as  an  organized 
interest  and  force,  was  not  extinct,  and  the  Irish  vote 
was  always  Democratic.  But  the  nation  agreed  with 
Lincoln  that  it  was  dangerous  "to  swap  horses  when 
crossing  a  stream,"  and  few  would  desire  another  in 
terregnum  like  the  last  days  of  Buchanan.  Lincoln 
was  now  digesting  his  plan  of  reconstruction,  which  was 
sure  to  be  inspired  by  good  sense  and  mercy.  This 
tyrant,  as  his  enemies  styled  him,  had  always  neglected 
to  surround  himself  with  guards,  though  threats  of  assas 
sination  were  in  the  air.  He  was  relieving  his  over-  April 
wrought  brain  in  the  theatre,  when  he  was  shot  in  his 
box  by  Wilkes  Booth,  a  Southerner,  and  a  ranting  actor 
of  melodrama,  who  then  vaulted  upon  the  stage,  and 
brandishing  a  bloody  dagger  with  which  he  had  struck 
one  of  Lincoln's  suite,  shouted  sic  semper  tyrannis,  the 
motto  of  the  tyrannicide  republicanism  of  the  Virginian 
slave-owner.  Booth  was  hunted  down  and  slain  by  his 
pursuers;  happily,  since  evil  passions  might  have  been 
awakened  by  his  trial.  Lincoln  was  borne  to  the  grave 
amidst  an  immense  outburst  of  public  sorrow,  admiration, 
and  gratitude.  Admiration  has  risen  to  worship,  and 
Lincoln  has,  in  the  minds  of  some  of  his  eulogists,  become 
the  greatest  statesman  and  the  master  spirit  of  his  age. 
He  has  even  become  a  great  strategist,  though  it  seems 
almost  certain  that  he  did  harm  by  interfering,  or  allowing 
his  military  counsellors  at  Washington  to  interfere,  with 
the  conduct  of  the  war.  He  said  himself  that  he  had  not 
controlled  events,  but  had  been  guided  by  them.  To 


282  THE    UNITED    STATES.  CHA  >. 

know  how  to  be  guided  by  events,  however,  if  it  is  net 
imperial  genius,  is  practical  wisdom.  Lincoln's  goodness 
of  heart,  his  sense  of  duty,  his  unselfishness,  his  freedoi  i 
from  vanity,  his  longsuffering,  his  simplicity,  were  never 
disturbed  either  by  power  or  by  opposition.  The  habit 
which  he  retained  through  all  the  dark  days  of  his  Presi 
dency,  of  throwing  his  thoughts  into  the  form  of  pithy 
stories  and  apologues,  caused  him  to  be  charged  with  levity. 
To  the  charge  of  levity  no  man  could  be  less  open. 
Though  he  trusted  in  Providence,  care  for  the  public 
and  sorrow  for  the  public  calamities  filled  his  heart  and 
sat  visibly  upon  his  brow.  His  State  papers  are  excellent, 
not  only  as  political  documents,  but  as  compositions,  anc' 
are  distinguished  by  their  depth  of  human  feeling  anc. 
tenderness  from  those  of  other  statesmen.  He  spoke 
always  from  his  own  heart  to  the  heart  of  the  people. 
His  brief  funeral  oration  over  the  graves  of  those  who 
had  fallen  in  the  war  is  one  of  the  gems  of  the  language. 
The  death  of  Lincoln  on  the  eve  of  reconstruction  was 
an  irreparable  loss,  especially  to  the  vanquished.  With 
good  reason  General  Sherman,  when  he  received  the 
news,  told  a  Confederate  general  that  the  worst  of  all 
disasters  had  befallen  the  Confederate  cause. 

That  the  war  had  really  been  international,  not  civil, 
was  felt  by  the  victors,  though  not  recognized.  To  the 
official  theory  that  secession  had  been  rebellion  and 
treason,  a  nominal  deference  was  paid  by  the  imprison 
ment  and  indictment  of  Jefferson  Davis,  who,  when 
Lincoln  would  have  desired  his  escape,  had  been  caught 
rather  farcically  disguised  in  woman's  clothes.  But  no 
blood  was  shed  on  the  scaffold,  nor,  saving  the  abolition 
of  slavery,  was  there  any  confiscation.  The  abolition  of 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  283 

slavery  in  itself  was  a  heavy  punishment  to  the  slave- 
owning  authors  of  secession ;  it  stripped  them  at  once 
of  their  property  and  of  their  social  grandeur.  Of  the 
planter  aristocracy  and  of  the  "  first  families  of  Virginia  " 
this  was  the  grave.  They  had  staked  all,  and  all  was  lost. 
It  is  due,  however,  to  the  people  of  the  North  to  say 
that  among  them  generally  there  never  had  been  any 
thought  of  vengeance,  not  even  while  the  conflict  was 
still  raging,  though  the  feelings  excited  were  not  much 
less  intense  than  those  excited  by  a  really  civil  war. 
All  but  the  fiercest  fanatics  said  that  the  object  sought 
was  the  restoration  of  the  Union,  and  that  the  South  would 
find  mercy  if  it  would  only  submit  to  the  law.  Good 
nature  and  humanity  not  only  survived,  but  reigned.  Care 
was  taken  of  Confederate  as  well  as  of  Federal  wounded. 
Confederate  prisoners  were  well  fed,  and  in  the  prison 
camps  seemed  to  suffer  no  hardships  but  those  which  were 
inseparable  from  their  lot ;  if  many  of  them  died,  it  was 
because  the  caged  eagle  dies.  Prisoners  in  hospital  were 
well  tended,  and  in  a  prison  hospital  the  table  of  the 
inmates  was  seen  on  Thanksgiving  Day  spread  with 
the  good  things  of  the  season.  This  was  the  more 
notable,  because  the  accounts  which  reached  the  North 
of  the  sufferings  of  its  soldiers  in  Southern  prisons  were 
heartrending,  and  were  too  true ;  they  were,  in  fact,  at 
tested  by  the  arrival  of  living  skeletons,  who  had  been 
exchanged.  For  scantily  feeding  their  prisoners  the 
Southerners  might  plead  the  excuse  that  they  had  little 
bread  themselves ;  but  such  atrocities  as  those  of  the 
prison  camp  at  Andersonville  nothing  could  excuse,  noth 
ing  except  the  temper  bred  of  slave-owning  could  explain. 
Of  that  camp  even  the  Confederate  Inspector-General 


284  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CUA  p. 

spoke  as  a  place  of  horrors  beyond  description.  There, 
in  a  stockaded  field,  1540  feet  long  by  750  feet  wide, 
were  confined  at  last  31,693  prisoners  of  war.  The  -e 
was  no  protection  from  the  sun  or  rain ;  the  rations  were 
of  the  worst  quality,  sometimes  uncooked,  and  were 
barely  enough  to  support  life,  while  if  one  of  a  squad 
of  prisoners  was  missing  the  rest  were  deprived  of 
rations  for  the  day.  Into  the  brook,  from  which  all 
drank,  flowed  the  filth  and  excrements  from  the  who'e 
camp ;  its  banks  were  covered  with  ordure  and  ali\  e 
with  maggots.  When  the  rain  set  in  the  ground  wr  s 
covered  with  slush  a  foot  deep,  and  the  whole  surface 
was  like  a  cesspool,  which  when  the  heat  came  bred 
pestilence.  In  it  wandered  about,  pushing  each  othe .-, 
the  crowd  of  shoeless,  hatless,  famished  captives,  man  y 
of  them  with  scarcely  a  tatter  to  cover  them.  In  August 
and  September  there  were  more  than  3000  sick,  lying  on 
the  ground,  partially  naked ;  some  with  broken  limbs,  some 
suffering  from  gangrene,  scurvy,  or  diarrhoea,  coated  with 
vermin,  and  tortured  by  mosquitoes.  The  death  rate 
reached  eight  and  a  half  per  hour.  The  dead  were  dragged 
to  the  outlet  and  hauled  away  by  waggon  loads.  The 
stench  we  are  told  reached  two  miles.  Hundreds  went 
mad,  and  added  moral  to  physical  horrors.  Whoever  even 
put  a  hand  over  "  the  dead  line  "  was  shot ;  not  a  few 
courted  that  fate  in  despair.  Bloodhounds  were  kept 
to  run  down  fugitives.  Out  of  44,882  prisoners  in  the 
course  of  thirteen  months  12,462  died.  Wirz,  the  gaoler 
of  Andersonville,  a  foreign  mercenary,  was  hanged  by  the 
North,  not  for  rebellion,  but  for  murder,  a  doom  which 
the  heads  of  the  department,  if  they  knew  what  was 
going  on,  deserved  to  share.  Such  was  the  exit  of  slavery 
from  the  civilized  world. 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  285 

A  noble  and  consoling  part  of  this  most  tragic  drama 
was  the  Sanitary  Commission  of  the  Federals.  This  was 
the  creation  of  spontaneous  effort  and  voluntary  contribu 
tion,  being  merely  recognized  by  the  government.  At 
its  head  was  a  clergyman,  Dr.  Bellows.  It  received 
contributions  to  the  amount  of  three  millions  of  dollars 
in  money,  and  nine  millions  of  dollars  in  supplies.  Its 
organization  extended  over  the  whole  scene  of  conflict, 
and  shed  a  ray  of  mercy  on  every  field  of  carnage. 
Its  arrangements  for  removing  the  wounded  from  the 
field  to  field  hospitals  and  for  transfer  to  permanent  hos 
pitals,  as  well  as  its  improvements  in  the  construction 
of  hospitals  themselves,  which  were  planned  on  the  prin 
ciple  of  isolation,  formed  a  beneficent  epoch  in  the  history 
of  military  medicine.  The  Mower  Hospital  at  Phila 
delphia  held  four  thousand  patients.  Great  is  the  con 
trast  which  this  picture  presents  to  the  practices  of  the 
armies  of  the  European  monarchies  such  as  Austria  in 
the  last  century.  Anaesthetics,  too,  the  most  merciful  of 
inventions,  were  now  lending  the  surgeon  their  blessed 
aid. 

Democracy  might  fairly  say  that  in  this  case  she  had 
been  justified  of  her  children.  The  patriotic  effort  of 
a  free  community  had  shown  well  beside  the  force  of  the 
Southern  oligarchy  or  despotism.  The  Republic  had 
received  a  large  measure  of  free-will  offering  and  sacrifice. 
There  had  been  a  good  deal  of  volunteering  at  the  outset, 
and  the  army,  though  not  volunteer,  was  in  the  main 
native  to  the  last.  Of  the  head  boards  on  the  graves  of 
thirteen  thousand  soldiers  of  the  Union  at  Washington, 
almost  all  bore  the  name  of  the  dead  man,  although 
here  and  there  was  a  board  marked  "  unknown  soldier." 


286  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHA :•>. 

That  the  men  had  homes  for  which  to  fight  was  prove! 
by  the  constant  return  of  corpses  to  those  homes,  and  the 
activity  of  the  embalmers'  trade  at  Washington .  The 
rich  who,  as  a  class,  had  least  reason  to  be  well  affected  to 
Democracy,  and  who  in  the  United  States  had  been  too 
much  shut  out,  or  stood  aloof  from  public  life,  showe  1 
themselves  generally  not  wanting  in  attachment  to  the 
Republic,  while  some  of  them  displayed  the  most  devote  I 
loyalty,  pouring  out  freely  not  their  wealth  only,  but  their 
blood.  Mr.  Wadsworth,  a  wealthy  landowner,  left  his 
mansion  when  he  was  past  middle  age  to  fight  and  fall  in. 
the  Wilderness.  He  was  the  moral  heir  of  the  Sussex 
landowner,  who  also  left  his  mansion  in  middle  age  to 
become  the  first  Governor  of  Massachusetts.  Not  only  was 
the  war  taxation,  though  heavy,  grinding,  and  inquisitoria  , 
cheerfully  borne,  but  voluntary  contributions  were  large , 
nor  did  the  fountains  of  ordinary  charity  and  munificence 
in  the  meantime  cease  to  flow. 

To  the  surprise  of  the  world  the  constitution,  barring 
State  right,  came  out  of  the  ordeal  unscathed.  The 
idea  of  national  union  had  definitively  triumphed  over 
that  of  a  federal  league  or  compact.  The  nation  had 
been  consolidated,  and  its  spirit  had  been  raised  by 
community  of  effort  and  peril.  Southern  oligarchy,  with 
its  influence  on  the  politics  of  the  Union,  was  extinct. 
The  negro  had  been  emancipated,  and  his  admission  to 
citizenship  was  at  hand.  Otherwise  there  was  no  political 
change.  The  exceptional  "power  with  which  the  govern 
ment  had  been  practically  invested  for  the  conduct  of  the 
war  was  resigned,  or  ceased  as  soon  as  the  war  was  over. 
Of  temporary  interference  with  personal  liberty  there  had 
probably  been  not  much  more  than  the  exigencies  of  the 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  287 

struggle  required,  considering  that  the  South  had  many 
allies  and  the  government  many  enemies  at  the  North, 
while  in  the  border  States  not  only  disaffection,  but  active 
hostility  was  rife.  Habeas  corpus  was  suspended,  and  a 
number  of  arbitrary  arrests  were  made.  Yet  few,  as  it 
appeared,  which  were  not  warranted  by  the  necessities  of 
the  war.  A  limit  was  sure  to  be  imposed  by  the  constitu 
tional  sensitiveness  of  the  nation,  nor  could  anything  be 
more  remote  from  the  character  of  the  President  than 
arbitrary  violence.  The  press  appeared  to  enjoy  reason 
able  freedom,  and  it  criticised  the  acts  of  the  govern 
ment  with  little  restraint,  though  it  was  necessary  to 
forbid  the  preaching  of  sympathy  with  the  enemy,  or 
denunciation  of  the  draft.  A  stranger,  visiting  the 
Republic  at  that  time,  saw  nothing  like  a  reign  of  terror. 
At  the  second  election  of  Lincoln,  though  passions  were 
fiercely  inflamed,  the  minority  was  allowed  freely  to  exer 
cise  its  political  rights,  and  not  only  to  put  up  its  candi 
date,  frame  a  platform  denouncing  the  war  as  a  failure, 
and  vote  with  perfect  freedom,  but  to  hold  its  public 
meetings,  array  its  processions,  and  hang  out  its  party 
banners  in  the  street.  Nor  was  any  serious  act  of  violence 
committed,  or  even  apprehended,  unless  it  were  on  the 
part  of  the  foreign  mob  of  New  York.  The  current  of 
life  at  the  North  flowed  calmly  on.  A  stranger  would 
not  have  suspected  that  he  was  in  a  country  engaged  in 
a  civil  war.  Engaged  in  a  civil  war  indeed  the  country, 
properly  speaking,  was  not.  The  war  was  one  of  invasion, 
and  had  the  visitor  been  transported  to  the  invaded 
country,  to  Georgia  after  the  desolating  march  of  Sher 
man,  or  to  the  Shenandoah  Valley  when  it  had  been 
ravaged  by  Sheridan,  a  different  scene  would  have  met 


288  THE   UNITED   STATES. 


CHAl  . 


his  eye.  Still  it  was  remarkable  how  small  the  visiblo 
signs  of  disturbance  at  the  North  were,  considering  tho 
perils  of  the  times,  and  the  number  of  citizens  who  wero 
in  the  camp. 

Nor  did  the  military  force  show  any  tendency  to  get  the 
upper  hand  of  civil  government.  When  General  Sherman, 
after  his  career  of  victory,  encroached,  probably  without 
intention,  on  the  sphere  of  civil  authority,  in  offering 
terms  to  the  vanquished,  he  was  with  ease  recalled  to 
his  proper  functions.  Europe,  judging  from  historical  pre 
cedents,  had  believed  that  the  army  would  be  left  master 
of  the  nation  and  would  not  suffer  itself  to  be  dis 
banded,  but  would  raise  its  chief  to  supreme  power.  At 
the  close  of  the  war  the  army  was  a  million  strong,  as  well 
as  flushed  with  victory.  Yet  it  was  disbanded  with  pei- 
fect  ease,  at  once  returned  to  the  trade  and  callings  of 
peace,  and  mingled  with  the  community  at  large.  NOJ 
the  slightest  tendency  to  usurpation  or  sabre  sway  was 
shown  by  any  of  its  chiefs.  General  Grant  himself  was 
not  only  guiltless  of  any  such  disposition,  but  was  averse 
from  military  pomp  and  parade,  disliking,  it  was  said,  the 
very  sound  of  the  drum.  His  camp  equipment,  his  dress, 
and  his  habits  were  as  simple  as  his  character,  more  simple 
they  could  not  be,  and  he  showed,  what  an  aspirant  to 
dictatorship  and  empire  could  hardly  afford  to  show, 
remarkable  justice  and  generosity  in  his  conduct  towards 
his  colleagues.  The  story  was  current  that  his  most 
formidable  rival  having  formally  protested  in  writing  at 
a  council  of  war  against  Grant's  plan  of  attack,  and  the 
attack  having  succeeded,  Grant,  instead  of  keeping  the 
protest,  or  forwarding  it  to  headquarters,  handed  it  back 
to  the  author.  Nor  was  the  nation  infected  with  military 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  289 

fever.  There  was  no  sign  of  it,  saving  a  multiplication 
for  the  time  of  military  titles  as  harmless  as  it  was  com 
mon.  In  one  respect  the  military  character,  at  least  that 
of  the  professional  soldier,  enhanced  its  claim  to  public 
confidence,  for  amidst  all  the  charges  and  suspicions,  true 
or  false,  of  corruption,  with  which  in  that  season  of  temp 
tation  the  air  was  laden,  none  adhered  to  the  honour  of  a 
graduate  of  West  Point. 

One  who,  at  the  end  of  the  war,  predicted  in  European 
company,  that  the  Americans  would  pay  their  debt,  and 
redeem  their  paper  currency,  was  apt  to  be  met  with 
derision.  But,  if  he  knew  the  American  people,  he 
replied  with  confidence,  that,  setting  morality  aside,  they 
well  understood  the  value  of  their  credit,  and  were  too 
wise  '  to  destroy  it.  The  result  is  well  known.  Some 
demagogues  there  were  who  breathed  repudiation  into  the 
national  ear,  but  their  evil  promptings  took  no  effect; 
the  national  faith  was  strictly  kept ;  specie  payments 
were  resumed,  and  the  debt  was  reduced  with  a  rapidity 
that  astonished  the  world.  Nor,  looking  to  the  amount  of 
war  taxation  which  had  been  borne,  and  that  of  the  free 
contributions,  could  it  be  said  that  the  generation  which 
made  the  war  had  cast  an  excessive  burden  on  posterity. 
Confederate  bonds,  of  course,  could  not  be  paid,  though 
they  maintained,  for  some  time,  a  spectral  existence  on  the 
stock  exchange.  Their  holders  were  thus  fined  for  abet 
ting,  or  at  least  confiding  in  a  slave  power. 

Industry,  though  it  was  for  a  time  diverted  from  the 
increase  of  wealth  to  the  work  of  slaughter  and  destruc 
tion,  lost  nothing  of  its  activity  or  thrift.  Invention  was 
stimulated,  especially  in  the  making  of  farm  implements 
to  supply  the  place  of  the  labour  withdrawn  to  the  camp. 


290  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAI  . 

In  this  way  as  well  as  in  the  way  of  medical  and  surgical 
improvement  peace  made  a  little  profit  out  of  war. 
When  peace  came  American  prosperity  appeared  to  bound 
forward  more  vigorously  than  ever.  An  exception  to  this 
at  first,  and  for  some  years  to  come,  was  the  South, 
which  lay  wrecked  and  ruined.  Yet  even  for  the  South  a 
better  time  was  coming.  Emancipation  was  to  prove  an 
economical  as  well  as  a  moral  and  social  blessing.  Tho 
negro  was  to  become  a  better  producer ;  cotton  crops, 
instead  of  ceasing  to  be  raised,  were  to  increase ;  tho 
higher  industries,  no  longer  barred  out,  were  to  develop 
resources  hitherto  dormant,  and  from  the  blackened  ruins 
of  Atlanta  was  to  rise  a  city  far  larger  and  wealthier  than 
Atlanta  had  ever  been. 

Evils,  economical  and  moral,  attended  this  as  the}' 
attend  all  wars.  Profuse  expenditure  leads  to  a  violent; 
displacement  of  wealth,  opens  the  door  to  frauds,  espe 
cially  in  the  dark  region  of  contracts,  and  gives  birth  to 
fortunes  of  sudden  growth,  often  ill  made,  and  when  ill 
made  pretty  sure  to  be  ill  spent.  In  this  case  the 
expenditure  had  been  more  than  profuse,  and,  till  the 
administration  was  organized,  had  been  little  controlled. 
Inconvertible  paper  had  inevitably  led  to  speculation  in 
gold,  and  the  Gold  Room  became  a  vast  gambling  hell, 
which  left  its  trace  on  commercial  character.  Among 
the  unhappy  results  of  an  economical  kind  freetraders 
will  reckon  the  war  tariff,  imposed  for  the  purpose  of 
revenue,  but  continued  when  the  war  was  over,  at  the 
instance  of  the  industries  which  had  profited  by  it,  for 
the  purpose  of  protection.  Much  the  same  thing  had 
happened  after  1812,  when  the  protection  which  the  war 
had  given  was  renewed  in  the  form  of  a  tariff.  The 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  291 

political  party  which  had  made  and  sustained  the  war,  in 
fact,  presently  became  the  party  of  the  tariff,  and  appeals 
to  war  memories  and  war  feelings  were  made  in  the 
interest  of  protection.  Resentment  against  England, 
which  had  been  created  by  altercations  with  her  govern 
ment,  and  the  escape  of  Confederate  cruisers  from  her 
ports,  aided  the  native  manufacturer  in  what  he  was  able 
to  represent  as  the  patriotic  exclusion  of  British  goods. 

A  literary  man  may,  perhaps,  feel  some  disappointment 
at  the  failure  of  this  mighty  stirring  of  the  national  spirit 
to  produce  much  literary  fruit,  especially  in  the  way  of 
poetry.  There  were  poems,  not  a  few  martial  and  pa 
triotic.  But  they  read  more  like  the  laboured  tributes  of 
Laureates  to  the  nation  than  like  the  offspring  of  inspira 
tion,  and  none  of  them  can  be  called  great.  Perhaps 
"  John  Brown,"  which  became  a  sort  of  Marseillaise,  and 
"  Maryland,  My  Maryland,"  which  breathed  the  yearning 
of  a  border  State  for  peace,  were  the  two  most  genuine 
expressions  of  sentiment  among  the  poetic  products  of  the 
time.  We  are  still  without  a  worthy  history  of  the  war. 
The  materials  abound,  and  include  a  number  of  memoirs 
written  by  the  chief  actors.  Never  were  there  so  many 
soldiers  who  could  use  the  pen  as  well  as  the  sword. 
Marlborough  could  not  spell. 

The  cost  of  the  war  is  incalculable.  To  a  declared 
Federal  debt  of  12,757,000,000  are  to  be  added  five  years 
of  war  taxation,  the  debts  of  the  several  States,  and  now  a 
pension  list  of  a  hundred  and  forty  millions  of  dollars 
a  year,  together  with  the  loss  of  industry,  the  ruin  of 
commerce,  and  the  destruction  of  property,  which  at  the 
South  was  immense,  and  fell  ultimately  on  the  restored 
Union.  It  is  reckoned  that  between  battle  and  disease 


292  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

a  million  of  men  lost  their  lives,  or  were  crippled  in  the 
war.  So  much  did  it  cost  to  abolish  American  slaver/. 
In  Russia  the  emancipation  of  the  serfs  was  effected  with 
out  the  loss  of  life  or  money  to  the  State.  The  slaves  in 
the  West  Indies  were  emancipated  peacefully  at  a  cost  of 
twenty  millions  sterling,  or  a  hundred  and  fifty  millions 
of  dollars,  little  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  amount  of  tie 
pension  list  for  one  year.  There  are  some  things,  though 
they  may  be  few,  which  a  supreme  authority  in  good  hands 
can  do  best. 

There  were  questions  yet  to  be  settled  with  foreign 
powers.  The  French  emperor,  having  failed  to  lure  the 
British  government  into  an  intervention,  his  secret  aim  in 
which  probably  was  the  recovery  of  Louisiana,  had  set  up 
a  Latin  Empire  in  Mexico,  of  which  he  made  the  Austrian 
Prince  Maximilian  emperor,  placing  a  French  marshal  at 
his  side,  and,  no  doubt,  intending  to  treat  him  as  a  satrap. 
At  the  end  of  the  American  war  the  French  emperor 
received  from  the  Washington  government  notice  to 
quit.  He  gave  ear  and  withdrew  his  army.  Maximilian, 
remaining  behind  out  of  chivalrous  regard  for  his  par 
tisans  in  Mexico,  was  overpowered  by  the  patriots,  to 
whom  American  generals  are  believed  privately  to  have 
supplied  arms,  taken  prisoner,  and  shot.  Of  British 
neutrality  both  the  contending  parties,  as  was  to  be 
expected,  had  complained ;  the  South  denouncing  it  as  a 
veiled  alliance  with  the  North,  because  recognition  was 
refused  to  the  Confederacy,  Confederate  envoys  were  not 
received,  and  neutrality  laws  were  enforced;  the  North 
denouncing  it  as  a  veiled  alliance  with  the  South  because 
the  neutrality  laws  were,  in  a  few  instances,  successfully 
evaded  by  the  Confederates.  From  the  shipyards  and 


v.  RUPTURE    AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  293 

harbours  of  a  nation,  which,  besides  her  own  ports,  has 
those  of  maritime  dependencies  all  over  the  world,  in 
the  course  of  more  than  four  years'  war  three  Confed 
erate  privateers  escaped.  In  one  case,  that  of  the  Ala 
bama,  the  British  government  was  open  to  the  charge 
of  culpable  delay,  the  evidence  of  the  vessel's  character, 
furnished  by  the  American  ambassador,  having  been 
allowed  to  lie  too  long  before  the  legal  adviser  of  the 
Crown,  who  happened  to  be  incapacitated  by  sickness.  The 
vessel  escaped  from  Liverpool  when  the  order  for  her  de 
tention  was  on  its  way,  under  pretence  of  a  trial  trip, 
without  a  clearance  and  unarmed ;  she  took  her  armament 
on  board  at  the  Azores.  That  the  British  government 
desired  or  connived  at  any  breach  of  its  neutrality  is  abso 
lutely'  untrue.  There  was  understood  to  be  only  one 
member  of  the  Cabinet  who  even  wished  success  to  the 
South,  for  Lord  Palmerston,  though  he  might  not  be  a 
friend  of  the  American  Republic,  was  a  zealous  opponent 
of  slavery.  Some  colour  was  perhaps  given  to  the  impu 
tation  of  unfriendliness  by  the  habitual  haughtiness,  it 
may  be  discourtesy,  of  Lord  Russell.  The  North  availed 
itself  of  the  British  market  for  the  purchase  of  arms  and 
munitions  of  war,  while  its  agents  recruited  along  the 
Canadian  frontier,  and  the  number  of  Canadians  enlisted 
in  its  armies  was  reckoned  by  the  Canadian  government 
at  many  thousands.  Nor  did  the  Canadian  government 
afford  the  slightest  ground  for  the  imputation  that  it  fos 
tered  or  failed  to  repress  the  machinations  of  Southerners 
who  had  gathered  on  its  territory,  and  could  not,  without 
breach  of  law  and  hospitality,  be  expelled.  For  a  raid 
which  some  of  them  organized  it  was  in  no  way  to  blame. 
The  ground  for  complaint  in  the  case  of  the  Alabama  was 


294  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CH.-.P. 

not  so  strong  as  that  in  the  case  of  the  French  privateers 
fitted  out  from  American  ports  under  the  Presidency 
of  Washington,  whose  honourable  desire  to  preserve 
neutrality  is  beyond  doubt.  The  Alabama,  not  being 
effectively  pursued,  did  much  damage  to  American  com 
merce.  As  compensation  for  this,  and  for  the  damage 
done  by  her  two  consorts,  the  Florida  and  Shenandoalt, 
Great  Britain  paid,  under  the  treaty  of  Washington,  the 
sum  of  three  million  two  hundred  thousand  pounds, 
whereof  a  part  has  remained  in  the  hands  of  the 
American  government  for  default  of  claims.  Compe  i- 
sation  was  refused  for  the  raid  of  the  American-Irk h 
community,  called  the  Fenian  raid,  on  Canada,  and  Great 
Britain  was  fain  to  pocket  the  refusal.  She  feared,  and 
always  fears,  for  her  North  American  dependencies  as  well 
as  for  her  trade.  The  principle  of  arbitration,  however, 
gained  a  step. 


Now  came  the  problem  of  reconstruction.  There  were 
two  questions  to  be  settled,  the  emancipation  of  the  negro, 
and  the  re-annexation  of  the  conquered  States  to  the 
Union.  Lincoln's  proclamation,  issued  in  exercise  of 
his  military  power,  had  only  set  the  slave  free,  and  this 
only  in  the  States  with  which  the  North  was  at  war ;  not 
in  Maryland,  Kentucky,  and  Missouri,  which  had  re 
mained  in  the  Union.  It  was  his  earnest  desire,  and  he 
made  it  the  chief  platform  in  his  second  campaign  for  the 
Presidency,  that  there  should  be  a  constitutional  amend 
ment  abolishing  slavery  everywhere  and  forever.  What 
his  plan  with  regard  to  negro  suffrage  was,  he  seems  not  to 
have  made  known.  He  had  shown  himself  aware  of  tho 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  295 

inferiority  of  the  race,  while  he  recognized  its  human 
rights.  He  could  hardly  be  blind  to  the  warning  example 
of  negro  self-government  in  Hayti,  where  it  has  been,  and 
still  is,  a  disastrous  failure,  even  when  all  due  allowance 
has  been  made  for  the  evil  training  of  slavery,  and  for  the 
storm  of  frenzied  and  murderous  revolution  amidst  which 
the  Haytian  Republic  had  been  born.  Garrison  himself, 
the  preacher  of  emancipation  immediate  and  uncondi 
tional,  had  seemed  to  halt  on  the  verge  of  negro  enfran 
chisement.  Emancipation  having  been  accomplished,  he 
questioned  whether  the  President  could  safely  or  advan 
tageously  enforce  a  rule  touching  the  ballot  which  abol 
ished  distinctions  of  colour.  Nothing,  he  thought,  would 
be  gained  by  forcible  enfranchisement  without  a  general 
preparation  of  sentiment,  because  as  soon  as  the  State  was 
left  to  manage  its  own  affairs,  the  whites  would  surely 
dominate,  and  would  exclude  the  fiat  voters  from  the 
poll.  On  the  other  hand,  how  was  the  personal  freedom 
of  the  blacks  to  be  guarded,  unless  the  whites  were  con 
trolled  by  political  power  vested  in  the  negro,  or  by 
military  force  ?  In  fact  no  sooner  did  the  whites  in  some 
of  the  Southern  States  recover  a  measure  of  self-govern 
ment  than  they  began  to  frame  sharp  vagrancy  laws  for 
the  purpose  of  compelling  the  freed  negroes  to  work.  It 
was  a  problem,  like  emancipation  itself,  hardly  capable  of 
solution,  except  by  a  power  supreme  over  both  races,  and 
able  to  hold  the  balance  of  policy  and  equity  between 
them.  The  difficulty  of  blending  two  forms  of  society, 
radically  antagonistic,  into  a  single  self-governing  commu 
nity,  had  survived  Appomattox  in  a  modified  form. 

The  other  question,  taken  by  itself,  was  somewhat  less 
difficult,  provided  it  could  be  seen  in  the  true  light  and 


296  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAJ. 

disembarrassed  of  the  metaphysical  controversies  respect 
ing  the  relations  of  subjugated  rebel  States  to  the  Union, 
in  which,  seen  in  a  false  light,  it  is  involved.  The  theory 
was  that  the  North  had  put  down  a  rebellion.  The  f  ac ; 
was  that  it  had  conquered,  wrecked,  and  re-annexed  L 
short-lived  nation  or  group  of  communities,  severed 
from  it  by  a  stroke  of  nature.  Of  this  the  trophies  pre 
served  at  the  North  are  signs ;  for  civil  war  or  suppressed 
rebellion  has  not  trophies  any  more  than  it  has  triumphs. 
Military  occupation  of  the  conquered  States  would  have 
been  simple  and  feasible.  Reconstruction  on  a  republican 
footing  could  be  effected  only  by  the  best  men  and  tlu 
accepted  leaders  of  the  States  themselves.  This  was  seen 
by  General  Sherman.  "  I  perceived,"  he  said,  "  that  we 
had  the  unbounded  respect  of  our  armed  enemies,  and 
that  by  some  simple  measures  we  could  enlist  them  in  one 
cause.  By  their  instrumentality  we  could  not  only  restore 
our  whole  government  according  to  its  written  fabric,  but 
could  have  in  every  vicinage  men  used  to  subordination 
and  government,  who  would  employ  their  influence  to 
create  civil  order.  I  am  sure  that  my  own  army,  now 
disbanded,  makes  the  best  of  citizens ;  and  I  am  also  sure, 
that  at  the  close  of  the  civil  war  the  Confederate  army 
embraced  the  best  governed,  the  best  disposed,  the  most 
reliable  men  in  the  South ;  and  I  would  have  used  them  in 
reconstruction  instead  of  driving  them  into  a  hopeless 
opposition."  John  A.  Andrew  also,  the  great  war  gov 
ernor  of  Massachusetts,  said  in  his  valedictory  of  January 
the  4th,  1866,  that  the  natural  leaders  of  the  South,  who, 
by  temporary  policy  and  artificial  rules,  had  been  for  a 
while  disfranchised,  would  resume  their  influence  and  their 
sway;  that  they  would  challenge  the  validity  of  public 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  297 

acts  done  during  their  disfranchisement ;  that  for  the 
work  of  reconstruction  their  co-operation  ought  to  be 
secured,  and  that  without  it  reorganization  would  be  delu 
sive.  The  politicians  at  the  South,  who  had  made  the 
war,  were  discredited  by  defeat,  and  the  leadership  would 
have  passed  to  the  soldiers,  in  whose  worth  and  honour 
confidence  might  have  been  placed.  Lincoln  seems  to 
have  been  inclined,  like  Sherman  and  Andrew,  to  the 
liberal  view.  Indeed,  he  had  adopted  this  polic}7,  and  had 
begun  to  carry  it  into  effect,  so  far  as  the  constitutional 
version  of  the  case,  teaching  him  that  he  was  dealing  with 
rebels  and  traitors,  which  necessarily  had  possession  of 
his  mind,  would  permit.  In  December,  1863,  he  had 
offered  general  amnesty  to  insurgents  and  disloyalists, 
special  classes  excepted,  on  condition  of  their  taking  and 
keeping  an  oath  of  allegiance  to  the  Federal  government. 
He  also  offered  to  recognize  and  protect  any  loyal  govern 
ment,  in  an  insurgent  State,  set  up  by  those  who  should 
take  the  amnesty  oath,  if  they  had  been  legal  voters  before 
the  secession  of  their  State  and  amounted  in  number  to 
one-tenth  of  the  votes  cast  in  the  Presidential  election 
of  1860.  He  was  further  willing  to  aid  in  any  other  mode 
of  reconstruction  that  might  be  adopted  in  any  other  State. 
The  admission  of  representatives  to  Congress  he  left  to 
Congress  itself.  Under  this  plan  loyal  governments  were 
created  and  recognized  in  Arkansas  and  Louisiana.  The 
enunciation  of  this  policy,  however,  caused  a  revolt  of  the 
radical  party  in  Congress,  which  formed  a  plan  of  its  own, 
providing  for  a  military  governor  invested  with  all  the 
powers  of  government,  till  the  rebellion  should  be  over 
and  the  people  return  to  Federal  allegiance,  when  a 
new  government  and  constitution  should  be  framed  by 


298  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

a  convention,  elected  by  popular  vote,  with  a  sweeping 
exclusion  of  all  who  had  held  any  kind  of  civil  or 
military  office  under  the  "rebel  usurpation,"  or  had 
"  voluntarily  "  borne  arms  against  the  Union.  The  plan 
also  provided  for  the  perpetual  disfranchisement  of  all 
who  held  other  than  petty  civil  offices,  or  militaiy 
grades  above  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel,  under  rebel 
authority.  This,  as  the  result  proved,  was  reconstruction 
by  elimination  of  all  that  was  most  capable  of  governing 
or  worthy  to  govern  in  each  State. 

Lincoln  was  gone.  Into  his  place  stepped  the  Viee- 
April  President,  Andrew  Johnson,  of  Tennessee,  a  strong-  man 
in  his  way,  but  a  man  of  violent  temper  and  coarse  habit  3, 
who  had  been  nominated  for  the  Vice-Presidency  in  com 
pliment  to  the  Unionism  of  the  South,  with  that  want  of 
foresight  in  regard  to  consequences,  in  case  the  Vice-Presi 
dent  should  become  President,  which  had  been  displayed 
and  punished  by  the  event  in  the  case  of  Tyler.  As  a 
radical  leader  of  humble  birth,  Andrew  Johnson  had 
writhed  beneath  the  social  pride  of  the  slave-owning 
aristocrats  of  Tennessee.  He  longed  to  have  them  at  his 
feet  as  condemned  traitors,  suing  for  his  mercy;  and  he 
seems  to  have  been  ignorant  enough  of  human  nature  to 
fancy  that  for  his  mercy  they  would  owe  him  gratitude.  But 
the  negroes  he  loved  little  more  than  the  other  Southern 
whites  of  his  class,  and  his  heart  was  on  the  side  of  State 
right.  His  political  sentiments,  in  short,  were  those  of 
the  Unionist  and  war-Democrat,  not  those  of  the  Repub 
lican  party.  On  the  subject  of  reconstruction,  his  policy 
was,  in  the  main,  that  of  Lincoln,  and,  before  the  meeting 
of  Congress,  he  ventured  to  carry  it  into  effect  by  recon 
structing,  under  military  authority,  Republican  govern- 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  299 

ments  in  several  States,  and  readmitting  them,  so  far  as 
Avas  in  his  power,  to  the  Union.  But  he  had  neither 
the  influence  nor  the  address  of  Lincoln.  When  Con 
gress  met  with  a  strong  Republican  majority,  it  proceeded 
at  once  to  take  reconstruction,  and,  at  length,  so  far  as  it 
could,  government,  out  of  his  hands.  A  violent  conflict 
between  the  executive  and  the  legislature  ensued.  Under 
the  Parliamentary  system  of  Great  Britain  the  struggle 
would  at  once  have  been  brought  to  an  end  by  the  resig 
nation  of  the  minister  who  had  not  the  confidence  and 
support  of  Parliament.  Under  the  American  system  there 
was  no  such  mode  of  terminating  the  disagreement  be 
tween  the  two  powers.  Congress,  at  length,  by  an  Act 
deprived  the  President  of  his  prerogative  of  dismissing 
officers  of  the  government,  except  with  the  same  consent 
of  the  Senate  which  was  required  for  appointment.  The 
President  resisted,  and  brought  the  question  to  a  decisive 
issue  by  the  dismissal  of  Stanton,  Lincoln's  great  Secretary 
of  War.  Being  a  man  of  violent  temper,  he  vented  his 
wrath  in  unmeasured  vituperation  against  Congress.  He 
thus  lost  his  few  remaining  supporters.  Congress  then 
proceeded  to  impeach  him.  He  had  done  nothing  really 
worthy  of  impeachment,  and  the  measure  was,  in  truth,  a 
rough  mode  of  forcing  the  executive  into  unison  with  the 
legislature,  like  impeachments  of  unpopular  ministers  in 
England  before  constitutional  government  was  settled  on 
its  present  footing.  This  was  felt  by  moderate  Repub 
licans,  and  President  Johnson  was  acquitted  by  a  narrow 
vote. 

Reconstruction  was  now  in  the  hands  of  the  Republican 
party  in  Congress,  which  showed  the  usual  temper  of 
parties  victorious  after  a  desperate  struggle  by  giving  its 


300  THE   UNITED   STATES.  CHAP. 

principles  a  thorough-going  application.  By  two  amend 
ments  to  the  constitution,  not  only  was  slavery  universally 
and  forever  abolished,  but  the  negro  was  invested  with  the 
full  rights  and  powers  of  a  citizen.  To  guard  him  against 
vagrancy  laws,  and  watch  over  his  industrial  liberty,  a 
freedman's  bureau  was  established.  Political  reconstruc 
tion  was  carried  out  according  to  the  plan  of  Congress, 
with  a  sweeping  disfranchisement  of  all  who  had  taken  an 
active  part  in  the  rebellion,  which  for  some  years  excluded 
the  Southern  whites  from  political  power,  and  handed  over 
legislation  and  government  to  the  enfranchised  blacks, 
who  were  the  clients  of  the  Republican  party.  Ostensibly 
the  negro  was  master  of  the  States  ;  but  his  utter  igno 
rance,  incapacity,  and  credulity  made  him  the  dupe  and 
tool  of  white  adventurers  from  the  North,  nicknamed 
Carpet-baggers,  who,  in  alliance  with  some  apostate  South 
ern  whites,  nicknamed  Scallywags,  got  the  Southern  govern 
ments  into  their  hands.  There  ensued  a  reign  of  roguery, 
jobbery,  and  peculation  under  the  military  protection  of  the 
party  dominating  the  North.  States  were  loaded  with  debt, 
and  the  money  was  stolen  by  the  Carpet-baggers.  In  the 
appointment  of  judges  and  the  administration  of  justice  the 
same  corruption  prevailed.  This  was  not  the  way  to  recon 
cile  races.  To  wreak  vengeance  for  their  wrongs  and 
avenge  their  pride,  thus  wounded  to  the  quick,  the  whites 
organized  a  secret  society,  called  the  Ku  Klux  Klan,  parties 
from  which  were  sent  forth  by  night,  and  committed  horrible 
atrocities  on  the  negroes.  Like  secret  societies  in  general, 
the  Ku  Klux  Klan  went  beyond  its  original  design,  became 
the  organ  of  private  malice,  and  inaugurated  a  reign  of 
terror.  At  last  the  scandal  of  the  system  grew  insufferable, 
military  protection  was  withdrawn  from  the  carpet-bagging 


v.  RUPTURE   AND   RECONSTRUCTION.  301 

governments,  which  fell,  and  the  whites  were  enabled 
to  reinstate  themselves  in  power.  They  did  not  fail 
practically  to  disfranchise  the  negro,  either  by  driving  him 
from  the  poll,  or  refusing  to  count  his  vote.  So  it  is  still. 
The  negro  at  the  South  enjoys,  as  a  rule,  personal  and 
industrial  rights  which  the  war  won  for  him,  but  is 
excluded  from  political  power.  From  social  fusion  and 
equality  he  is,  if  possible,  further  than  ever,  since  con 
cubinage  has  become  rare,  and  there  is  an  end  of  the 
kindly  relations  which  sometimes  subsisted  between  mas 
ter  and  slave.  Nor  is  there  an  entire  equality  even  of 
personal  right,  since  the  negro  is  too  often  lynched  where 
the  white  would  have  a  fair  trial. 

The  soldiers  of  Meade  and  Lee,  the  soldiers  of  the  blue 
and  the  soldiers  of  the  gray,  have  met  as  brethren  on  the 
field  of  Gettysburg ;  but  the  question  between  the  races 
of  the  South  still  awaits  solution. 


INDEX. 


Abolitionists,  232,  233. 

Adams,  John,  71,  72,  77,  93,  101,  113, 
139, 141 ;  elected  president,  150 ;  his 
principles,  151 ;  his  character,  151, 
156. 

Adams,  John  Quincy,  191,  192;  his 
election  to  the  Presidency,  191 ;  his 
character,  192 ;  his  political  princi 
ples,  192 ;  attacks  on,  194 ;  his  con 
test  for  a  second  term,  194,  195. 

Adams,  Quincy,  229. 

Adams,  Samuel,  75,  119. 

Adultery,  Puritan  method  of  punish 
ing,  21. 

Adventurers,  the  early,  in  America, 
2,3, 

Alabama  secedes,  242. 

Alabama,  the,  272,  293,  294. 

Albany  Regency,  179. 

Alien  and  Sedition  Acts,  153. 

Amendments  to  the  Constitution,  126. 

American  Party,  the,  216. 

Ames,  Fisher,  146. 

Amnesty,  297. 

Andersonville,  prison  camp  at,  283, 
284. 

Andre',  Major,  107,  108. 

Andrew,  John  A.,  296. 

Andros,  Sir  Edmund,  33,  34,  55. 

Anti-Mason  Party,  the,  207. 

Anti-Slavery  Party.  See  Liberty 
Party. 

Antietam,  battle  on  the,  264. 

Appomattox,  280. 

Aquia  Creek  Railroad,  278. 

Arizona  annexed,  212,  214. 

Arkansas,  259,  297. 


Army,  the  Southern,  in  the  Civil  War, 

263. 

Arnold,  Benedict,  107,  108. 
Atlanta,  fall  of,  279. 
Aurora,  the,  146,  148. 

Bacon's,  Nathaniel,  junior,  rebellion, 
47,  48. 

Baptists,  13. 

Baltimore,  Lords,  48,  49. 

Battles  of  the  Civil  War,  character 
of,  271,  272. 

Bell,  238. 

Belligerent  rights  exercised  by  Great 
Britain,  161;  question  of,  161,  162. 

Bellows,  Rev.  Dr.,  285. 

Benton,  Thomas  Hart,  185 ;  his  char 
acter,  185 ;  on  the  tariff  of  1828, 188, 
189. 

Berkeley,  Governor,  47. 

Birney,  J.  G.,  211. 

Black  Beard,  51. 

Bladensburg,  fight  at,  171. 

Elaine,  J.  G.,  246. 

"  Blue  Laws  "  of  Connecticut,  23. 

Blockade  of  the  southern  coast,  the, 
272. 

Blockade  running,  272. 

Board  of  Trade,  58,  59. 

Booth,  Wilkes,  281. 

Boston,  Howe  evacuates,  90. 

Boston  massacre.  82 ;  "  tea  party,"  82. 

Bounties  and  bounty  jumping,  256. 

Bragg,  General,  271. 

Brandywine,  battle  of  the,  95. 

Breed's  Hill,  fight  on,  89. 

Brooke,  Lord,  17. 


304 


INDEX. 


Brooks,  236. 

Brown,  John,  237,  238. 

Buchanan,  President,  237 ;  his  mani 
festo  on  secession,  245. 

"Bucktails,"  179. 

Bnell,  269. 

Bull  Kuu,  fight  at  stream  of,  260. 

Burgoyne's  expedition,  98;  his  sur 
render,  99. 

Burke,  68,  69,  81,  113. 

Burns,  Anthony,  233. 

Burnside,  General,  266. 

Burr,  Aaron,  155. 

Butler,  Benjamin,  264;  at  New  Or 
leans,  270. 

Calef,  34. 

Calhoun,  J.  C.,  168,  170,  179, 182,  183; 
his  character,  183 ;  his  political  prin 
ciples,  183 ;  his  advocacy  of  slavery, 
183,  184,  201,  213. 

California  annexed,  212,  214;  stands 
hy  the  Union,  248. 

Callender,  154. 

Camden,  fight  at,  108. 

Canada  and  the  Maine  and  Oregon 
boundary  questions,  174, 175  ;  in  the 
war  of  1812,  169,  170;  invasion  of, 
93,  94. 

Canadian  rebellion  of  1837,  174. 

Canadians  in  the  Civil  War,  293. 

Canals,  217. 

Canning,  163,  169. 

Carleton,  Sir  Guy,  94. 

Carolinas,  the,  50;  constitution  of, 
50;  division  of,  50. 

Caroline,  the,  174. 

Carpet-baggers,  300. 

Cemetery  Hill.     See  Gettysburg. 

Chancellorsville,  battle  at,  273. 

Charming,  230. 

Charles  II  and  Massachusetts,  31,  32. 

Charleston,  51 ;  taken  by  Clinton,  108 ; 
in  the  Civil  War:  surrenders,  275. 

Chase,  Chief  Justice,  161. 

Chatham,  68,  70,  79,  81,  93,  106,  116. 

Chattahoochee,  278. 

Chattanooga,  259. 


Chesapeake,  the,  163,  171. 

Church  establishments  after  the  Rev  > 
lutionary  War,  118. 

Church  of  England,  in  the  colonies,  61. 

Church,  the,  in  Maryland,  49;  in  Vir 
ginia,  42. 

Churches  in  Massachusetts,  9,  10,  27. 

Clay,  Henry,  168,  170,  172,  176,  17!); 
his  character,  179;  his  political  pri  i- 
ciples,  180;  his  tariff  policy,  185, 
186, 187, 188 ;  on  American  industry, 
187,  190,  191,  199,  200,  201,  205,  205; 
a  candidate  for  the  presidency,  20  f ; 
his  unsuccessful  compromise,  210, 
211;  his  defeat,  211,  213. 

Clergy,  the  Puritan,  10,  11. 

Clinton,  De  Witt,  179. 

Clinton,  Sir  Henry,  95;  evacuates 
Philadelphia,  100;  takes  Charles 
ton,  108. 

Civil  Service,  the,  under  Jackson,  If  6. 

Civil  War,  204,  e t  sq. ;  chief  scene  (  f , 
260;  cost  of  the,  291;  histories  of 
the,  291. 

Code  of  New  England,  21,  22. 

Cold  Harbour,  276. 

College  of  William  and  Mary,  43. 

Colonial  relationships  with  Great 
Britain  (1764),  68  ct  sq. 

Colony,  the  Hellenic,  compared  with 
the  British,  6,  7. 

Columbia,  District-of,  264. 

Columbus  discovers  America,  1;  typi 
cal  of  his  generation,  2;  a  devotee, 
2;  a  type  of  the  age,  2;  his  life  and 
character,  2;  his  dealings  with  the 
natives,  2. 

Confederacy,  the  Southern,  243,  244  ; 
its  Constitution,  244;  its  Congress, 
944  052 

Congress,  dealings  of,  with  Bur 
goyne's  troops,  99:  first  session  of, 
131 ;  character  of,  124,  125 ;  powers 
of,  in  1775,  86,  87, 104 ;  weakness  of, 
after  the  Civil  War,  119;  offers 
concessions  to  slavery,  245. 

Connecticut,  7 ;  constitution  of,  19, 20 ; 
"blue  laws"  of,  23. 


INDEX. 


305 


Conscription  in  the  South,  274. 

Constitution,  the  American,  123  et  sq. 

Constitutions  of  the  States  after  the 
Revolutionary  War,  117  et  sq. 

Convention,  the  (1787),  122  et  sq. 

Conway,  81. 

Copperheads,  255. 

Cornwallis  at  Yorktown,  109. 

Cotton,  John,  8;  on  an  hereditary 
upper  house,  18;  on  democracy,  19. 

Courant,  the  New  England,  62. 

Cowpens,  fight  at,  109. 

Craik,  Sir  James,  163. 

Crawford,  William  H.,  191. 

Cromwell,  policy  of,  towards  the  col 
onists,  30. 

Cumberland  Road,  the,  190. 

Currency,  paper,  wholesale  issue  of 
(1775),  104;  results  of  this,  105. 

Davis,  Jefferson,  243,  244;   captured 

and  indicted,  282. 

Death  penalty  in  New  England,  21, 22. 
Declaration  of  Independence,  87  et  sq. 
De  Grasse,  109. 
Delaware,  55. 
Delaware,  Lord,  40. 
Democracy,    in    Massachusetts,    18; 

political  growth  of,  219. 
Democratic  Party,  206,  207,  236,  237. 
Democratic  press,  the,  on  secession, 

246. 

D'Estaing,  106,  116. 
Development    of    the    United  States 

before  the  Civil  War,  217  et  sq. 
Dighton  Rock,  1. 
Dix,  General,  245. 
Dixwell,  30. 
Donelson,  Fort,  268. 
Douglas,  Stephen,  234,  238,  250. 
Duane,  William,  147, 199. 
Dudley,  Joseph,  33,  34. 
Dudley,  Thomas,  9,  16. 
Dustin,  Hannah,  27. 
Dutch,  the,  of  New  Netherlands,  55. 

Early,  General,  277. 
Eaton,  Mrs.,  197. 


Eliot,  John,  26. 

Ellsworth,  Oliver,  122. 

Emancipation  discouraged,  222;  ef 
fects  of,  290. 

Embargo  on  trade  placed  by  Jefferson, 
164 ;  its  effects,  164,  165. 

Emerson,  229. 

Emigrants  to  America,  the  first,  4 
et  sq. 

Endicott,  9. 

England's  attitude  during  the  Civil 
War,  257  ;  towards  the  South,  258; 
her  treatment  of  America  after  the 
separation,  140. 

Ericsson,  272. 

Erskine,  British  Minister  at  Washing 
ton,  169. 

Etowah,  278. 

Everett,  238. 

Excise,  Hamilton's,  Pennsylvania  re 
volts  against,  143. 

Expansion,  provision  for,  129. 

Farragut,  Admiral,  270,  279. 

Federal  bank,  155,  159. 

Federal  principle,  the,  20. 

Federalist  Party,  150,  153,  154. 

"  Federalist,  the,"  128. 

Federation  (1774),  86. 

Fenton,  Captain,  maltreatment  of  his 

wife  and  daughter,  99. 
Fillmore  becomes  President,  213. 
Finances  in  1775, 104 ;  during  the  Civil 

War,  257. 

Financial  crisis  of  1837,  199,  206. 
Florida,  the,  294. 
Force  Bill,  201. 

Fort  Donelson.  (See  Donelson,  Fort.) 
Fort  Pillow.     (See  Pillow,  Fort.) 
Fort  Sumter.     (See  Sumter,  Fort.) 
Fox,  80,  113. 
France  aids  America,   105,  106,  112; 

condition  of  in  1789,  115 ;  preys  on 

American  commerce,  151. 
Franchise,  the,  220. 
Franklin,  Benjamin,  62,  63,  65,  67,  71, 

79,  122. 
Fredericksburg,  266. 


306 


INDEX. 


Free  Soil  Party,  214,  2,35. 

Free  trade,  internal,  12(5. 

Fremont,  237. 

French  Canada,  64;  compared  with 
the  English  colonies,  tJ5. 

French  Canadians  in  the  War  of  1812, 
170. 

French  Revolution,  American  sym 
pathy  with,  143. 

Freneau,  Philip,  138. 

Friends.    (See  Quakers.) 

Fusion  of  the  black  and  white  races 
impossible,  221. 

Gage,  General,  89. 

Gallatin,  Albert,  166. 

Garrison,  William  Lloyd,  230,  231, 
232 ;  and  negro  enfranchisement, 
295. 

George  Ill's  reception  of  John 
Adams,  the  first  American  Ambas 
sador,  141. 

Georgia,  founding  of,  52;  secedes, 
242. 

Genet,  144,  145. 

Geneva  award,  293,  294. 

Germaine,  Lord  George,  85,  89. 

Germantown,  battle  of,  95. 

Gerry,  Elbridge,  122. 

Gettysburg,  battle  of,  273,  274. 

Ghent,  treaty  of,  172. 

Goffe,  30. 

Gold  Room,  the,  290. 

Gold-seeking  in  Virginia,  3. 

Gorges,  Sir  Ferdinando,  33. 

Gorton,  Samuel,  13. 

Governors  of  colonies,  59,  60. 

Grand  Remonstrance,  the,  as  a  pre 
cedent,  88. 

Grant,  General  Ulysses,  268  et  sq. ;  put 
in  command,  275;  crosses  the  Rap- 
pahannock,  275;  his  simplicity,  288. 

Greeley,  Horace,  252. 

Greene,  General  Nathaniel,  92,  107, 
111. 

Greenland,  discovery  of,  1. 

Grenville,  67,  68,  73,  79,  81. 

Guildford,  fight  at,  109. 


Half-breeds,  numerous,  224  ;  theit 
status,  224. 

Hamilton,  Alex.,  112,  122,  131;  hit* 
political  character,  132 ;  his  prin 
ciples,  132,  133,  134;  his  financial 
skill,  134;  his  purity  and  patriot 
ism,  134,  149 ;  death  of,  155. 

Hancock,  75. 

Harper's  Ferry,  237. 

Harrison,  Wm.,  his  candidature,  208. 

Harvard.  University  of,  11. 

Hayti,  295. 

Henry,  John,  163. 

Henry,  Patrick,  75,  76 ;  his  associates, 
76;  his  oratory,  7(i,  77,  128. 

Hessians,  85. 

Holland  joins  America  against  Eng 
land  (1780),  106. 

Hood,  General,  279,  280. 

Hooker,  General,  267,  273. 

Hooker,  Thomas,  19. 

House  of  Representatives.  (See  Con 
gress.) 

Houston,  Samuel,  in  Texas,  209. 

Howe,  General,  90,  94. 

Huguenots  in  Florida,  3. 

Hutchinson,  Mrs.  Ann,  13. 

Hutchinson,  Governor,  75,  79,  82. 

Independence,  colonial  disavowals  of, 

71  et  sq. 

Independents,  7,  8. 

Indians,  early  relations  with,  25  ct  sq. 
Indians,  employment  of,  in  the  war 

(1775-76),   93;     defeat    of,    by    St. 

Clair,  142. 

Imperial  control,  59  ct  sq. 
Impressment  of  seamen,  162. 
Inter-marriages,  28. 
Irish  immigrants,  175 ;   influx,  char' 

acter,  and  influence  of,  216. 
Iroquois,  the,  26,  27. 

Jackson,  Andrew,  148,  172,  191,  193; 
his  character,  193 ;  his  execution  of 
Ambrister  and  Arbuthnot,  193;  his 
democratic  tendencies,  194  ;  his 
inauguration,  195, 196 ;  his  treatment 


INDEX. 


307 


of  the  Senate,  198,  200 ;  his  influence 
on  public  life  and  character,  202, 203. 

Jackson,  "  Stonewall,"  2(32  et  sq. 

James  II  and  Massachusetts,  33. 

Jamestown,  3. 

Jay,  John,  112. 

Jay's  treaty,  146,  147. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  71,  87,  131  et  sq. ; 
his  character,  135 ;  his  political  prin 
ciples,  135 ;  his  theories,  135,  136, 
137 ;  as  a  political  leader,  138 ;  he- 
comes  President,  155  ;  his  simplicity 
as  President,  156;  his  inaugural 
address,  157 ;  his  purchase  of  Lou 
isiana,  158,  159;  prosperity  of  his 
first  term,  159, 160 ;  his  second  term, 
161 ;  his  jealousy  of  the  judiciary, 
160,  161  ;  retires,  165. 

Jesuits,  26;  their  Utopia  in  Paraguay,  3. 

Johnson,  Andrew,  298;  his  character, 
298 ;  his  political  opinions,  298 ;  his 
struggle  with  Congress,  299;  his  im 
peachment,  299. 

Johnston,  Joseph,  General,  275. 

Jones,  Paul,  105. 

Judges,  United  States,  126. 

Kansas,   struggle  in,  on  the  slavery 

question,  238. 

Kansas-Nebraska  Act,  234. 
Kentucky  admitted  as  a  slave  State, 

127;   character  of  its  inhabitants, 

167. 

Kidd,  Captain,  51. 
King,  Eufus,  122. 
Knownothingism,  215,  216,  237. 
Ku  Klux  Klan,  the,  300. 

Lafayette,  106,  116. 

Land  tenure  in  New  England,  23. 

Las  Casas,  26. 

Law,    American,  based  on   common 

law  of  England,  118. 
Lecompton  constitution,  236. 
Lee,  General  Robert  E.,  262  et  sq.; 

surrenders  to  Grant,  280. 
Leisler,  55. 
Leopard,  the,  163. 


Lexington,  fight  at,  89. 

Liberator,  The,  230,  231. 

Liberty  bills,  233. 

Liberty  Party,  211. 

Life,  manner  of,  in  New  England,  23 
et  sq. 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  238 ;  his  early  life, 
239 ;  his  appearance,  239 ;  his  char 
acter,  240;  his  abolitionism,  240; 
as  a  speaker,  241 ;  elected  President, 
242;  opinions  on  rebellion,  248;  his 
position  as  President,  250;  enters 
Washington,  250  ;  his  statesman 
ship,  250  et  sq.,  282;  is  murdered, 
281. 

Literature  and  the  Civil  War,  291. 

Locke's  constitution  for  the  Carolinas, 
50. 

Long  Island,  fight  on,  94. 

Longstreet,  274. 

Lopez  attempts  to  seize  Cuba,  215. 

Louisbourg,  capture  of,  66. 

Louisiana,  259,  297 ;  secedes,  242. 

Loyalists  vacate  Boston,  90;  treat 
ment  of,  after  the  war  91,  110, 
111,  140;  England's  treatment  of, 
112. 

Lundy,  the  lecturer,  230. 

McClellan,  General,  261  et  sq.;  a  can 
didate  for  the  Presidency,  280. 

McDuffie,  189,  190. 

"  Machine,"  the,  in  politics,  179. 

Madison,  122,  138.  139 :  elected  Presi 
dent,  165;  his  character,  166. 

Maine,  33 ;  boundary  question,  174  ; 
admitted  into  the  Union,  178. 

Manufactures,  colonial,  57,  80  ;  de 
velopment  of,  218. 

Mansfield,  74. 

Marcy,  196. 

Marshall,  Chief  Justice,  92,  155. 

Maryland,  founding  of,  48,  49;  the 
church  in,  49 ;  puritanism  in,  48, 49  ; 
slavery  in,  49,  263. 

Mason,  the  confederate  envoy,  258. 

Massachusetts,  founding  of,  7,  8,  9; 
the  Puritan  Commonwealth  in,  9; 


308 


INDEX. 


the  Massachusetts  Company,  8,  18; 
churches  in,  9, 10;  education  in,  11 ; 
religious  feeling  in,  11,  12;  policy 
of,  16  et  sq. ;  elections  in,  17 ;  fed- 
eration  with  Plymouth,  Connecticut, 
and  New  Haven,  20;  allegiance  of, 
to  the  British  crown,  28;  practical 
independence  of,  28;  changes  in  reli 
gious  and  political  feelings  of,  31  et 
sq. ;  charter  annulled,  33;  restored, 
35 ;  Shays'  rebellion  in,  121 ;  and 
the  slave  trade,  127. 

Mather,  Cotton,  3G,  38. 

Maximilian,  Prince,  292. 

Mayflower,  the,  4,  8. 

Meade,  General,  271,  273,  274. 

Mechanical  skill  shown  in  Sherman's 
campaign,  278,  279. 

Merrimack,  the,  272. 

Mexico,  war  with  (1836),  209,  210, 
211,  212;  Latin  Empire  in,  292. 

Michigan  lost  to  the  United  States  in 
the  War  of  1812,  170. 

Middle  States,  53  et  sq. ;  population  of, 
56;  self-government  in,  56;  consti 
tution  of,  56;  education  in,  56  ;  the 
church  in,  56,  57;  slavery  in,  57. 

Military  influence,  a  factor  in  the 
choice  of  presidents,  193. 

Military  obstacles  to  repression,  85. 

Military  strength  of  North  and  South 
compared,  253  et  sq. 

Militia,  the  American  (1774),  85. 

Militia,  Pennsylvanian,  conduct  of, 
in  the  Revolutionary  War,  103,  104. 

Miller,  Rev.  Mr.,  61. 

Mineral  resources,  218. 

Ministers  of  State,  125. 

Minute  Men,  89,  90. 

Missionary  enterprise,  3. 

Mississippi,  the,  259,  270. 

Mississippi  secedes,  242. 

Missouri  and  the  Union,  177,  178,  259. 

Mobile,  279. 

Monitor,  the,  272. 

Monmouth  Court  House,  fight  at,  100. 

Monroe  doctrine,  the,  175 ;  object  of, 
175,  176. 


Monroe,  James,  president,  175 ;  char 
acter  of  the  period  of  his  presidency, 
177. 

Montgomery,  General,  94. 

Montreal  taken,  94. 

Morgan,  Wrilliam,  207. 

Morris,  Gouverneur,  122,  142. 

Morris,  Robert,  119,  122. 

Mower  Hospital,  285. 

Murfreesborough,  battle  of,  273. 

Napoleon's  confiscation  of  American 
shipping,  166;  his  Rambouillet  de 
cree,  166. 

Nashville,  280. 

National  Bank  instituted  by  Hamil 
ton,  134;  under  Jackson's  Presi 
dency,  198, 199;  its  fall,  199;  vetoed 
by  Tyler,  209. 

National  Republican  Party,  214. 

Naturalization  Act,  153,  154. 

Negro,  the,  as  a  soldier,  266;  status 
of,  after  the  Civil  War,  301. 

Negroes,  enlistment  of,  by  the  North, 
265. 

New  England,  4;  climate  and  soil  of, 
38 ;  material  resources  of,  38 ;  growth 
of,  38. 

New  England  colonies,  7  et  sq. ;  pop 
ulation  of,  56. 

New  Hampshire,  7. 

New  Haven,  20. 

New  Jersey,  56. 

New  Mexico  annexed,  212,  214. 

New  Netherlands,  55. 

New  Orleans,  battle  of  (1815),  172, 
173 ;  taken  by  Farragut,  270. 

New  Plymouth,  4. 

Newport,  old  mill  at,  1. 

Newspapers,  62. 

New  York,  54,  55 ;  taken,  95;  riots  at, 
273. 

Norfolk  Navy  Yard,  255. 

North  Carolina  (see  also  Carolinas, 
the) ,  immigration  to,  50,  51 ;  secedes, 
242. 

North,  Lord,  74,  80,  81,  85,  100. 

Northmen,  discoveries  of,  1. 


INDEX. 


309 


Norumbega,  1. 
Nullification,  153. 

Oglethorpe,  General,  52. 
"  Old  Hickory."     See  Jackson,   An 
drew. 

Oligarchy  in  the  South,  220. 
O'Neil,  Peggy,  197. 
Oostanaula,  278. 
Oratory,  219. 

Oregon  boundary  question,  174. 
Osteud  manifesto,  the,  215. 
Otis,  75. 

Paine,  Tom,  87,  105,  149. 

Pakenham,  General,  172. 

Palmerston,  Lord,  259,  293. 

Pequod  War,  27. 

Paris,  Comte  de,  256,  2<J7. 

Parker,  Theodore,  230. 

Parliament  and  the  colonies  (1764) ,  68. 

Parties',  political,  distinctly  formed, 
150. 

Party  Government  unforeseen  by  the 
framers  of  the  constitution,  126. 

Penn,  William,  53 ;  his  scheme  of  gov 
ernment,  53. 

Pennsylvania,  founding  of,  53;  reli 
gious  toleration  in,  54. 

Pension  list,  the,  291. 

Peters,  Hugh,  8. 

Petersburg,  277. 

Philadelphia,  54. 

Philip,  King,  27 ;  war  with,  27. 

Phillips,  Wendell,  246,  247. 

Pierce,  President,  215. 

Pillow,  Fort,  266. 

Pinckney,  122. 

Pitt,  115,  142. 

Pittsburgh  Landing,  2f>8.  See  also 
Shiloh,  battle  of. 

Planters  of  Virginia,  character  and 
life  of,  42, 43. 

Plug-uglies,  250. 

Plymouth  pilgrims,  4  et  sq. 

Poems  of  the  Civil  War,  291. 

Polk,  J.  K.,  210. 

Pope,  General,  263. 


Potomac,  army  of  the,  275  et  sq. 
Potomac  Creek  Bridge,  278. 
Presidency,  contests  for,  heat  of,  and 

its  consequences,  179. 
President  of  the  United  States,  powers 

of,  124,  125. 
Press,  the  political,  birth  of,  62 ;  early 

growth  of,  after  Washington's  reign, 

154 ;  during  the  Civil  War,  256. 
Princeton,  fight  at,  95. 
Princeton  University,  56. 
Printing-press,   the    first    in    North 

America,  11. 
Prisoners  in  the  Civil  War,  treatment 

of,  283.     (See  also  Anderson ville.) 
Protective  tariff  of  1828, 188, 189.    (See 

also   Clay,    Henry,    and  Webster, 

Daniel.) 

Public  lands,  190. 
Puritan  legislation,  21. 
Puritan  theocracy,  9,  10. 
Puritanism,  its  political  character,  15, 

16;    in  Maryland,   48,  49;  in  New 

England,    changes    in,    and    their 

causes,  36  et  sq. 
Puritans,  8. 

Quakers,  character  of  the,  14;  in 
Rhode  Island,  15  ;  laws  against,  in 
Massachusetts,  14,  32,  33. 

Quebec  Act,  94. 

Quebec,  fall  of,  67 ;  taken  by  Wolfe, 
94. 

Race  problem,  the,  301. 

Railways,  218. 

Randolph,  John,  162,  185. 

Reconstruction,  281  et  sq.;  problem 
of,  294  et  sq. 

Repression,  measures  of  (1774),  83,  84. 

Republican  Party,  the,  214,  236,  246. 

Restoration,  the,  accepted  by  New 
England,  30. 

Revolutionary  War,  the,  88  et  sq.; 
general  character  of,  110 ;  events 
following,  110 ;  consequences  of,  to 
England,  107,  114;  to  the  colonies, 
114  et  sq. ;  to  France,  115,  116. 


310 


INDEX. 


Rhode  Island,  7 ;  liberty  of  conscience 

in,  12;  Quakers  in,  14. 
Richmond,   244,    259,   2GO,    261,    262; 

evacuation  of,  280. 
Riedesel,  Mine,  de,  99. 
Robinson,  John,  10. 
Rochambeau,  109. 
Rockingham,  68,  81. 
Rodney,  114. 
Rosecrans,  General,  271. 
Ross,  General,  171. 
Russell,  Lord,  293. 

St.  Glair,  Arthur,  142. 

Salem,  37,  38. 

Sanitary  commission,  the,  285. 

Savannah,  surrender  of,  279. 

Say-aud-Sele,  Lord,  17. 

Scallywags,  300. 

Scott,  Dred,  234. 

Scott,  General,  247. 

Secession,  241  et  sq. ;  possibilities  of 

peaceful,    247 ;    and    State     right, 

248. 

Sedition  Act,  153. 
Semmes,  272. 
Senate,  the  United  States,  124;    the 

chief    arena    for    slavery    debates, 

184 ;  cause  of  this,  184,  185. 
Sewall,  Judge,  38. 
Seward,  238,  246,  250. 
Shannon,  the,  171. 
Shaw,  Colonel,  265. 
Shays,  Daniel,  121. 
Shelburne,  113,  142. 
Shenandoah  Valley,  277. 
Shenandoah,  the,  294. 
Sheridan,  General,  277. 
Sherman,  Mrs.,  case  of,  19. 
Sherman,  General,  268,  277  ;  his  march 

through  Georgia,  279,  288,  296. 
Sherman,  Roger,  122. 
Shiloh,  battle  of,  268,  269. 
Simcoe,  Governor,  141. 
Slave  industry  inferior,  225. 
Slave  laws    of    South   Carolina,   51 ; 

Virginia,  43,  44. 
Slave  trade,  Columbus  and  the,  2. 


Slavery,  in  Georgia,  52 ;  in  the  Mid 
die  States,  57  ;  in  New  England,  25 
in  Pennsylvania,  53,  54;  in  South 
Carolina,  51 ;  in  Virginia,  41 ;  clauses 
of  the  constitution  relating  to,  127 
and  the  admission  of  Missouri,  178 
Calhoun's  advocacy  of,  183, 184 ;  tut 
result  of  soil  and  climate,  221 ; 
American  compared  with  ancient. 
221 ;  not  elevating  to  the  negro, 
222;  nor  christianizing,  222;  sinistei 
aspects  and  influences  of,  222,  223. 
224;  aggressive,  226;  dominance  of, 
227,  228;  denouncements  of,  230; 
political  protests  against,  229;  the 
cause  of  secession,  243;  abolished, 
300. 

Slavery  question,  the,  re-opened  by 
the  acquisition  of  Texas,  213 ;  now 
dead,  221 ;  possibility  of  a  peaceful 
solution  of,  22(5,  227. 

Slidell,  the  Confederate  envoy,  258. 

Smith,  Adam,  70. 

Smith,  John,  3,  4,  40. 

South  American  Republics,  the, 
176. 

South  Carolina  (see  also  Carolinas, 
the),  51;  slave  code  of,  51;  rises 
against  a  protectionist  tariff,  201; 
secedes,  241. 

Spain  joins  America  against  England 
(1779) ,  106. 

Speaker  of  Congress,  the,  125. 

"  Spoils  system,"  196. 

Squatter  sovereignty,  234. 

Stamp  Act,  68,  80,  81. 

State  right,  237;  and  the  right  of 
secession,  248. 

States,  rivalries  of  the,  after  the 
Revolutionary  War,  120;  general 
condition  of,  after  the  Revolution 
ary  War,  120. 

Steam  transport,  217,  218. 

Stephens,  Alexander,  242. 

Stowe,  Mrs.  Beecher,  230. 

Suffrage,  the,  220 ;  and  the  negro,  294, 
295. 

Sumner,  236,  246. 


INDEX. 


311 


Sumter,  Fort,  253. 

Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States, 
the,  126;  under  Jefferson's  Presi 
dency,  161. 

Talleyrand,  151. 

Taney,  Chief  Justice,  234,  235. 

Tarleton,  109. 

Taxation  (1764),  68,  69. 

Taylor,  Zachary,  president,  212;  his 
character,  213. 

Tea-duty,  80. 

Tennessee  secedes,  242. 

Texas,  annexation  of,  212;  secedes, 
242. 

Thomas,  General,  280. 

"Tippecanoe."  (See  Harrison,  Wil 
liam.) 

Topeka  Constitution,  236. 

Tories,  82. 

Towushend,  68,  74,  79,  80,  81. 

Trade  and  Navigation  Acts,  57. 

Trade,  colonial,  57  et  sq.,  80. 

Treaty  of  Ghent,  172 ;  of  Washington, 
294;  Jay's,  146,  147. 

Trenton,  fight  at,  95. 

Tucker,  Dean,  70. 

Tyler,  John,  Vice-President,  208;  be 
comes  President,  209. 

University  of  Virginia,  137.  (See  also 
Harvard,  Yale.) 

Valley  Forge,  95  et  sq.  (See  also 
Washington,  George.) 

Van  Buren,  Martin,  197;  his  ability, 
206,  210. 

Vane,  Henry,  8, 13. 

Vergennes,  113. 

Vermont  and  the  slave  trade,  127. 

Veto,  the  Presidential,  125. 

Vicksburg,  270;  fall  of,  274. 

Virginia,  3,  39  et  sq. ;  society  of.  41 : 
settlement  of,  40,  41 ;  planters  of, 
42,  43 ;  slave  laws  of,  43,  44  ;  po 
litical  development  of,  45  et  sq.; 
the  church  in,  46  ;  education  in,  46, 
47  ;  loyalty  of,  47 ;  secedes,  242. 


Volunteering  in  the  North  in  the  Civil 
War,  256. 

Wadsworth,  Mr.,  286. 
Walker's  invasion  of  Nicaragua,  215. 
Waller,  Sir  William,  91. 
War,    the     Revolutionary    (1775-6), 
cruelties  of  the,  92,  93  ;    War  of 
1812,  motives  of,  168,  169;  votes  on, 
170;  England's  naval  reverses  in, 
170, 171 ;  close  of,  172;  alleged  justi 
fication   of,   173;  consequences   of, 
173.     (See  also  Civil  WTar.) 
|    War  Democrats,  255,  256. 
'•  WTar-hawks,"  170,  171. 
1    War  tariffs,  290. 
1    Ward,  Nathaniel,  21. 
Washington,  71,  72 ;  appointed  Com- 
mander-in-Chief  of  the  Continental 
forces,  90;   concentrates  his  forces 
at   Xew  York,  94;  victories  of,   at 
Trenton  and  Princeton,  95  ;  takes  up 
position  at  Valley  Forge,  95  ;  hard 
ships  suffered  by  his  troops,  96, 103; 
his  importance  to  the  confederacy, 
96 ;  his  character,  96,  97 ;  compared 
with     Wellington,    97  ;      jealousy 
against,  97 ;  character  of  his  troops, 
100,  101,  102,  103;  his  descriptions 
of  the  times  (1775),   100,  101,  106; 
President  of  the  convention  (1787), 
121 ;  first  President,  130 ;  his  power 
and  state   as    President,   130;    his 
wisdom,  131;  his  second  term,  143 
et  sq.;   his  farewell  address,  147; 
his  retirement,  147. 
Washington  (the  city),  149 ;  taken  by 
General  Ross  (1814) ,  171 ;  threatened 
by  the  South  (1861),  260. 
|    Washington,  treaty  of,  294. 
!    Watertown,  dykes  at,  1. 
Wayne,  Anthony,  142. 
Wealth,  increase  of,  before  the  Civil 

War,  218. 

Webster,  Daniel,  176,  179,  180;  his 
character,  181 ;  as  an  orator,  181 ; 
his  style,  182;  his  political  prin 
ciples,  182 ;  his  opposition  to  a  pro- 


312 


INDEX. 


tective  tariff,  ISO,  187,  196,  200; 
speech  on  the  vetoing  of  the 
National  Bank  charter,  203,  204, 
205 ;  his  candidature  for  the  Presi 
dency,  213 ;  his  changes  of  opinion, 
213. 

Wedderlmrn,  73. 

Wesley,  John,  52. 

Whalley,  30. 

Whig-  Party,  the,  206, 207 ;  fades  away, 
214. 

Whigs,  82. 

Whitefield,  52. 

Wilderness,  battle  of  the,  275,  276. 


Wilkes,  Captain,  258. 

William  III  and  Massachusetts,  35. 

Williams,  Roger,  12. 

Wilson,  James,  122. 

Winthrop,  9,  16;  on  liberty,  16,  17. 

Wirz,  Captain,  284. 

Witchcraft,  37  ei  *</. 

Wolfe,  65. 

Wyoming,  93. 

"  X.  Y.  Z.  Correspondence,"  152. 

Yale,  University  of.  11. 
Yorktown,  capitulation  at,  109. 


WORKS  BY  PROFESSOR  GOLDWIN  SMITH. 


Third  Edition  now  ready. 

THE  UNITED  STATES. 
An  Outline  of  Political  History,   1492=1871 

By  GOLDWIN  SMITH,   D.C.L. 
With   Map.      Crown   8vo,    $2.00. 


"His  survey  of  events  is  luminous,  his  estimate  of  character  is  singularly  keen  and  just, 
and  his  style  is  at  once  incisive,  dignified,  and  scholarly.  .  .  .  No  one  who  takes  up  Mr. 
Goldwin  Smith's  volume  will  readily  lay  it  down  before  he  has  finished  it ;  no  one  will  lay  it 
down  without  acknowledging  the  rare  gifts  of  the  writer." —  The  Times. 

"  Is  a  literary  masterpiece,  as  readable  as  a  novel,  remarkable  for  its  compression  without 
dryness,  and  its  brilliancy  without  any  rhetorical  effort  or  display.  What  American  could, 
with  so  broad  a  grasp  and  so  perfect  a  style,  have  rehearsed  our  political  history  from  Colum 
bus  to  Qrant  in  300  duodecimo  pages  of  open  type,  or  would  have  manifested  greater  candor 
in  his  judgment  of  men  and  events  in  a  period  of  four  centuries?  It  is  enough  to  say  that  no 
one  before  Mr.  Smith  has  attempted  the  feat,  and  that  he  has  the  field  to  himself." — The 
Nation. 

"  It  is  a  marvel  of  condensation  and  lucidity.  In  no  other  book  is  the  same  field  covered 
so  succinctly  and  so  well.  Of  the  five  chapters,  the  first  deals  with  the  Colonial  epoch,  the 
second  with  the  Revolutionary  period,  the  third  and  fourth  review  the  history  of  the  Federal 
Government  to  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War,  and  the  fifth  depicts  the  era  of  rupture  and 
reconstruction.  We  have  marked  certain  passages  for  extract,  but  the  truth  is  that  almost 
every  page  is  enriched  with  striking  comments  that  cause  the  reader  to  carefully  reconsider, 
if  not  to  change,  his  views  of  historical  persons  and  events."  —  New  York  Sun. 

"  To  say  that  nothing  comparable  with  this  most  instructive  and  enchanting  volume  has 
hitherto  come  from  Professor  Smith's  pen,  would  perhaps  be  only  anticipating  the  judgment 
of  its  readers."  —  Toronto  Mail. 

"  As  a  whole,  has  a  comprehensiveness  of  view  and  a  ready  grasp  of  leading  tendencies, 
that  should  make  it  particularly  useful  to  the  busy  man  who  desires  a  rapid  survey  of  Ameri 
can  political  history.  By  deliberately  neglecting  details  Professor  Smith  has  been  able  to 
fasten  the  attention  upon  salient  points,  and  to  concents-ate  interest  around  the  career  of  the 
great  leaders  in  our  political  development."  —  Boston  Beacon. 

"  No  pen  has  ever  been  more  eloquent  than  his  in  setting  forth  the  merits  of  Washington, 
and  Hamilton,  and  Webster,  and  Lincoln,  and  others  of  America's  great  citizens.  The  chap 
ters  on  '  Democracy  and  Slavery '  and  '  Rupture  and  Reconstruction '  deserve  thoughtful 
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ESSAYS  ON  QUESTIONS  OF  THE  DAY: 

POLITICAL    AND    SOCIAL. 
12mo,  cloth,  $2.25. 


CANADA  AND  THE  CANADIAN  QUESTION. 

With  Map.     Demy  8vo,  cloth,  $2.00. 


"  This  is  a  timely  book,  but  it  is  something  more.  ...  It  is  as  valuable  for 
its  discriminating  comments  upon  contemporary  social  life  in  Canada,  as  for 
its  brilliant  review  of  Canada's  political  history,  and  its  convincing  arguments 
in  favor  of  her  commercial  union  with  the  United  States.  .  .  .  Mr.  Smith  is  a 
wonderfully  acute  critic."  —  Christian  Union. 

"  These  questions  —  for,  as  will  be  seen,  there  are  many  comprised  under 
one  head  —  are  all  treated  in  Professor  Smith's  latest  volume  with  the  clear 
ness  and  force  which  belong  to  all  his  writings."  —  Critic. 

"  The  book  is  admirably  concise  in  method,  often  epigrammatic  in  the 
sweeping  generalizations.  The  method  is  modern,  moreover,  in  that  it  takes 
account  of  social  forms  and  prejudices,  of  popular  thought,  in  short,  as  well  as 
of  the  political  plans  of  the  few  so  called  leaders  of  men."  —  HAMLIN  GARLAND, 
in  77ie  Arena. 

"  If  there  is  any  man  on  this  continent  who  is  thoroughly  competent  to 
present  'Canada  and  the  Canadian  Question,'  Gold  win  Smith  is  he;  and  the 
volume  in  which  he  has  done  so  is  sure  of  a  hearty  welcome."  — Detroit  Free 

Press. 

THREE  ENGLISH  STATESMEN. 

A  Course  of  Lectures  on  the  Political  History  of 
England. 

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THE  CONDUCT  OF  ENGLAND  TO  IRELAND. 

AN   ADDRESS. 

8vo,  paper,  15  cents. 


A  TRIP  TO  ENGLAND. 

NEW  AND  REVISED  EDITION. 
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"  It  is  safe  to  say  that  so  much  in  so  little  can  hardly  be  found  elsewhere,  concerning 
England  as  it  appears  to-day."  —  Philadelphia  Evening  Telegraph. 

"Mr,.  Goldwin  Smith's  little  book,  although  intended  apparently  for  the  Canadian  reader, 
is  just  as  valuable  to  the  American.  Its  idea  is  excellent:  a  profound  historical  scholar,  who 
has  also  an  admirable  gift  for  communicating  knowledge  to  others,  offering  to  the  reader  about 
to  visit  England  his  services  as  a  companion  and  critic.  .  .  .  This  little  book  is,  as  a  whole, 
full  of  instruction  and  amusement,  and  is  admirably  written."  —  N.  Y.  Times. 

"  A  delightful  little  work,  telling  in  a  most  charming,  rambling,  yet  systematic  way,  what 
is  to  be  seen  of  interest  in  England."  —  Chicago  Times. 

"  So  delightful  a  cicerone  as  Mr.  Goldwin  Smith  proves  himself  in  '  A  Trip  to  England ' 
does  not  often  fall  to  the  lot  of  the  non-personally  conducted.  .  .  .  Meissonier-like  in  its 
diminutiveness,  but  also  Meissonier-like  in  its  mastery." —  Critic. 

"  Americans  and  Canadians  alike  will  find  pleasure  and  instruction  in  Professor  Goldwin 
Smith's  brilliant  sketch  of  the  development  of  civilization  in  England,  and  the  marks  it  has 
left  in  architectural  and  other  monuments.  Properly  regarded,  the  book  is  in  fact  a  history  of 
English  social  transformations  outlined  in  conformity  with  the  best  knowledge  on  the  sub 
ject." —  Boston  Beacon. 

"  In  '  A  Trip  to  England,'  Professor  Goldwin  Smith  has  set  down  entertainingly  most  of 
the  facts  which  are  chiefly  interesting  and  valuable  to  the  inexperienced  tourist,  and  with 
many  wise  and  stimulating  comments.  He  has  avoided  the  ordinary  guide-book  manner, 
naturally,  and  has  written  a  series  of  comprehensive  and  very  readable  sketches."  —  Congre- 
gationalist. 


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placency  of  Tibullus,  the  occasional  tenderness  of  the  stilted  Propertius,  am: 
the  Queen  Anne  wit  of  Ovid.  Seneca,  Lucan,  Martial,  and  Claudian  are  alsc 
well  translated.  In  short,  the  volume  is  one  of  uncommon  merit  in  its  field, 
and  will  give  great  pleasure  to  all  lovers  of  classic  literature."  —  New  York 
Times. 

"  It  has  been  given  to  but  few  to  approach,  and  to  none  in  our  estimation 
to  surpass,  the  delicate  perception  and  the  exquisite  grace  with  which  Profes 
sor  Goldwin  Smith  has  served  up  this  glorious  classic  feast  with  choicest  Eng 
lish  and  in  faultless  style."  —  The  IVeek. 

"  The  choice  of  material  indicates  a  catholic  taste,  and  also  calls  for  a  good 
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of  Lucretius  is  one  thing,  and  that  of  giving  a  fair  equivalent  for  a  lyric  of 
Catullus  is  quite  another;  but  Professor  Smith  has  succeeded  admirably  in 
both." —  The  Beacon. 

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THE  AMERICAN  COMMONWEALTH. 

By  the  Right  Hon.  JAMES  BRYCE,  D.C.L., 

Author  of  "  The  Holy  Roman  Empire";  M.P.  for  Aberdeen. 

In  Two  Volumes,  Large  i2mo.      Third  Edition,  Revised  Throughout. 
Vol.  I.  $1.75.     Now  Ready,  Vol.  II.     In  the  Press. 

11  Written  with  full  knowledge  by  a  distinguished  Englishman  to  dispel  vulgar  prejudices 
and  to  help  kindred  people  to  understand  each  other  better,  Professor  Bryce's  work  is  in  a 
sense  an  embassy  of  peace,  a  message  of  good-will  from  one  nation  to  another."  — The  Times, 
London. 

"  This  work  will  be  invaluable  ...  to  the  American  citizen  who  wishes  something  more 
than  a  superficial  knowledge  of  the  political  system  under  which  he  lives  and  of  the  differences 
between  it  and  those  of  other  countries.  .  .  .  The  fact  is  that  no  writer  has  ever  attempted 
to  present  so  comprehensive  an  account  of  our  political  system,  founded  upon  such  length  of 
observation,  enriched  with  so  great  a  mass  of  detail,  and  so  thoroughly  practical  in  its  charac 
ter.  .  .  .  We  have  here  a  storehouse  of  political  information  regarding  America  such  as  no 
other  writer,  American  or  other,  has  ever  provided  in  one  work.  ...  It  will  remain  a  stan 
dard  even  for  the  American  reader."  —  New  York  Tribune. 

"  The  book  should  be  known  by  every  American  who  wishes  to  understand  his  own  coun 
try.  ...  It  is  by  far  the  most  able,  sincere,  candid,  and  impartial  study  of  the  condition  of 
the  United  States  that  has  ever  appeared  since  De  Tocqueville's  memorable  work."  —  Boston 
Beacon. 

"  This  general  outline  of  Mr.  Bryce's  most  important  book  is  given  in  the  hope  that  it  may 
help  create  the  conviction  that  no  earnest  and  intelligent  American  can  afford  to  remain 
ignorant*  of  it.  His  education  will  be  incomplete,  as  a  preparation  for  his  duties  as  a  citizen, 
if  he  does  not  take  advantage  of  the  helps  to  a  sound  judgment  and  a  noble  purpose  which 
are  here  given."  —  N.Y.  Evening-  Post. 


WORKS  BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR. 

THE  HOLY  ROMAN  EMPIRE.  Eighth  Edition,  revised  and 
enlarged.  Crown  8vo.  $1.00.  Library  Edition.  Svo.  $3.50. 

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who  has  so  thoroughly  grasped  the  real  nature  of  the  mediaeval  empire,  and  its  relations  alike 
to  earlier  and  later  times." 

TRANSCAUCASIA  AND  ARARAT.  Being  Notes  of  a  Vaca 
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Third  Edition.  Crown  Svo.  $2.50. 

The  Times  says:  "  He  has  produced  a  very  interesting  volume,  full  of  information.  .  .  . 
In  Professor  Bryce's  bold  ascent  of  Ararat  alone,  when  Kurds  and  Cossacks  alike  deserted 
him,  we  have  a  feat  of  mountain  climbing  which  in  itself  proves  him  to  be  no  unworthy 
member  of  the  Alpine  Club.  This  alone  would  render  the  book  well  worth  reading,  quite 
apart  from  the  store  of  information  contained  in  it." 

SOCIAL  INSTITUTIONS  OF  THE  UNITED  STATES.  Re 
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HISTORY     OF     THE    NEW     WORLD     CALLED 

AMERICA. 

By    EDWARD   JOHN    PAYNE, 

FELLOW  OF  UNIVERSITY  COLLEGE,  OXFORD. 
Vol.  I.     I2mo.     $3.00. 

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"  He  has  produced  a  volume  of  extraordinary  interest,  not  more  remarkable  foi 
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Times  (second  notice). 

"...  A  work  that  promises  to  be  of  very  unusual  interest  and  value.  Mr 
Payne  has  taken  up  his  important  theme  in  an  original  and  suggestive  manner ; 
and  he  is  in  the  way  to  arrive  at  conclusions  of  great  moment.  The  succeeding 
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—  Boston  Deacon. 

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province.  We  cannot,  however,  refrain  from  commending  the  painstaking  thor 
oughness  of  the  author's  researches." —  Chicago  Tribune. 

"We  have  before  us  the  first  instalment  of  the  most  comprehensive  and,  there 
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series  of  volumes  which,  if  we  may  judge  from  the  limited  space  covered  by  the 
book  now  issued,  will  be  a  long  one,  the  author,  Mr.  Edward  John  Payne,  a  Fellow 
of  University  College,  Oxford,  has  undertaken  to  present  a  well-ordered  and  artistic 
digest  of  the  results  of  a  scientific  study  of  the  annals  of  the  New  World  from  its 
discovery  to  the  present  day."  —  New  York  Sun  (first  notice). 

"  We  have  here  the  first  volume  of  a  history  of  this  continent  which  promises  to 
cover  a  broad  field,  and  to  be  more  unique  and  interesting  than  any  previous 
American  history.  It  is  refreshing  to  find,  amid  the  deluge  of  '  Columbus '  litera 
ture  and  histories  which  the  approaching  celebration  is  producing,  such  a  learned, 
dispassionate,  far-sighted  opening  volume  of  a  history  that  bids  fair  to  set  all  others 
in  the  background."  —  St.  Louis  Republican. 

"  To  the  exhaustive  scientific  and  ethnical  detail  displayed  in  this  first  volume 
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justice;  but  it  may  be  said  that  in  beauty,  dignity,  and  forcefulness  of  style  the 
book  is  extraordinary.  It  enriches  a  theme  still  unworn,  and  makes  the  pursuit  of 
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ADAMS  and  CUNNINGHAM.— The  Swiss  Confederation.  With  Map.  8vo.  $4.00. 

ANSON.  —  WORKS  BY  SIR  WILLIAM  R.  ANSON,  D.C.L. 
The  Law  and  Custom  of  the  Constitution.     Clarendon  Press  Series. 
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ARISTOTLE.      On  the  Athenian  Constitution.      Translated,  with  Introduction 
and  Notes,  by  F.  G.  K.ENYON,  M.A.,  Fellow  of  Magdalen  College,  Oxford. 
On  handmade  paper,  bound  in  buckram.     Post  8vo.     $1.10. 
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BAST  ABLE.  —  Public  Finance.  By  C.  F.  BASTABLE,  Professor  of  Political  Econ 
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"  His  treatise  on  Finance  is  exhaustive  and  far-reaching.  ...  As  a  thorough  statement 
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that  approaches  Dr.  Bastable's  in  precision  of  definition  or  order  of  arrangement." — Com 
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19 


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